To foster the people’s willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power.
B. H. LIDDELL HARTThe practical value of history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the present on to the screen of the future.
More B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes
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If you wish for peace, understand war.
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The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.
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For even the best of peace training is more theoretical than practical experience … indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.
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It is only to clear from history that states rarely keep faith with each other, save in so far (and so long) as their promises seem to them to combine with their interests.
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The implied threat of using nuclear weapons to curb guerrillas was as absurd as to talk of using a sledge hammer to ward off a swarm of mosquitoes.
B. H. LIDDELL HART -
Avoid self-righteousness like the devil- nothing is so self-blinding.
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For the spread and endurance of an idea the originator is dependent on the self-development of the receivers and transmitters.
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A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
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Air forces offered the possibility of striking a the enemy’s economic and moral centres without having first to achieve ‘the destruction of the enemy’s main forces on the battlefield’. Air-power might attain a direct end by indirect means – hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it.
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The downfall of civilized states tends to come not from the direct assaults of foes, but from internal decay combined with the consequences of exhaustion in war.
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Air Power is, above all, a psychological weapon – and only short-sighted soldiers, too battle-minded, underrate the importance of psychological factors in war.
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The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.
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In reality, it si more fruitful to wound than to kill. While the dead man lies still, counting only one man less, the wounded man is a progressive drain upon his side.
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As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.
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This high proportion of history’s decisive campaigns, the significance of which is enhanced by the comparative rarity of the direct approach, enforces the conclusion that the indirect is by far the most hopeful and economic form of strategy.
B. H. LIDDELL HART