The hydrogen bomb is not the answer to the Western peoples’ dream of full and final insurance of their security … While it has increased their striking power it has sharpened their anxiety and deepened their sense of insecurity.
B. H. LIDDELL HARTThe 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.
More B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes
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Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
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In a campaign against more than one state or army, it is more fruitful to concentrate first against the weaker partner than to attempt the overthrow of the stronger in the belief that the latter’s defeat will automatically involve the collapse of the others.
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No man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity, nor the incapacity of will.
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In should be the duty of every soldier to reflect on the experiences of the past, in the endeavor to discover improvements, in his particular sphere of action, which are practicable in the immediate future.
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Avoid self-righteousness like the devil- nothing is so self-blinding.
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The most effective indirect approach is one that lures or startles the opponent into a false move – so that, as in ju-jitsu, his own effort is turned into the lever of his overthrow.
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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.
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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.
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The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.
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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 -
To foster the people’s willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power.
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The higher level of grand strategy [is] that of conducting war with a far-sighted regard to the state of the peace that will follow.
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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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The predominance of moral factors in all military decisions. On them constantly turns the issue of war and battle. In the history of war they form the more constant factors, changing only in degree, whereas the physical factors are different in almost every war and every military situation.
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[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