black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.

B. H. Liddell Hart

In the case of a state that is seeking not conquest but the maintenance of its security, the aim is fulfilled if the threat is removed – if the enemy is led to abandon his purpose.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Enemy Military Purpose
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
An army should always be so distributed that its parts can aid each other and combine to produce the maximum possible concentration of force at one place, while the minimum force necessary is used elsewhere to prepare the success of the concentration.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Aids Army 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
Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Military Opponents Resistance
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Effort Military Moving
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
If you want peace, understand war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Peace Want War
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
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
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
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
The easiest and quickest path into the esteem of traditional military authorities is by the appeal to the eye, rather than to the mind. ‘The polish and pipeclay’ school is not yet extinct, and it is easier for the mediocre intelligence to become an authority on buttons, than on tactics.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Eye Military School
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
Air Power is, above all, a psychological weapon – and only short-sighted soldiers, too battle-minded, underrate the importance of psychological factors in war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Air Soldier War

With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes