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A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.

B. H. Liddell Hart

While there are many causes for which a state goes to war, its fundamental object can be epitomized as that of ensuring the continuance of its policy – in face of the determination of the opposing state to pursue a contrary policy. In the human will lies the source and mainspring of conflict.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Determination Military War
The more usual reason for adopting a strategy of limited aim is that of awaiting a change in the balance of force … The essential condition of such a strategy is that the drain on him should be disproportionately greater than on oneself.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Balance Military Usual
For the spread and endurance of an idea the originator is dependent on the self-development of the receivers and transmitters.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Endurance Ideas Self
As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Military Victory War
A modern state is such a complex and interdependent fabric that it offers a target highly sensitive to a sudden and overwhelming blow from the air.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Air Blow Target
If you find your opponent in a strong position costly to force, you should leave him a line of retreat as the quickest way of loosening his resistance. It should, equally, be a principle of policy, especially in war, to provide your opponent with a ladder by which he can climb down.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Military Strong War
To ensure attaining an objective, one should have alternate objectives. An attack that converges on one point should threaten, and be able to diverge against another. Only by this flexibility of aim can strategy be attuned to the uncertainty of war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Military War
Inflict the least possible permanent injury, for the enemy of to-day is the customer of the morrow and the ally of the future
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Allies Enemy Military
Natural hazards, however formidable, are inherently less dangerous and less uncertain than fighting hazards. All conditions are more calculable, all obstacles more surmountable than those of human resistance.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Fighting Hazards Military
While the nominal strength of a country is represented by its numbers and resources, this muscular development is dependent on the state of its internal organs and nerve-system – upon its stability of control, morale, and supply.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Country Military Numbers
The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Power Truth War
If you wish for peace, understand war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Peace War Wish
The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Expectation Indirect Line
The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Dangerous Errors Tendencies
The 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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Film Materials Past
For even the best of peace training is more theoretical than practical experience … indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

May Military Training
The more closely [the German army] converged on [Stalingrad], the narrower became their scope for tactical manoeuvre as a lever in loosening resistance. By contrast, the narrowing of the frontage made it easier for the defender to switch his local reserves to any threatened point on the defensive arc.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Army Levers Military
In war, the chief incalculable is the human will.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Marine Corps Military War
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

Direct Approach Hopeful Military
Ensure that both plan and dispositions are flexible, adaptable to circumstances. Your plan should foresee and provide for a next step in case of success or failure.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Next Should Steps Thinking
While hitting one must guard … In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Military Order Taken
Every action is seen to fall into one of three main categories, guarding, hitting, or moving. Here, then, are the elements of combat, whether in war or pugilism.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Fall Moving War
[The] aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this. In other words, dislocation is the aim of strategy.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Battle Decision Military
Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Kind Support War
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Decay Military War
If you want peace, understand war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Peace Want War
With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Growing Military Offensive

A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.

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A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.

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