Top 74 B.H. Liddell Hart Quotes
#1. The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#2. 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
#3. 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.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#4. 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
#5. It would seem that Caesar's recurrent and deep-rooted fault was his concentration in pursuing the objective immediately in front of his eyes to the neglect of his wider object. Strategically he was an alternating Jekyll and Hyde.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#6. We must face the fact that international relations are governed by interests and not by moral principles.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#7. The statesman will soon find himself thwarted in some way or other, will deduce from this opposition a menace first to his plans, then to national prestige, and finally to the existence of the state itself - and so, regarding his country as the party attacked, will engage in a war of defence.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#9. In strategy the longest way round is often the shortest way there- a direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loosens the defender's hold by upsetting his balance.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#10. The search for the truth for truth's sake is the mark of the historian.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#11. A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#12. But Polybius brought out the basic lesson in his reflection-'for as a ship, if you deprive it of its steersman, falls with all its crew into the hands of the enemy; so, with an army in war, if you outwit or out-manoeuvere its general, the whole will often fall into your hands'.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#13. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. The historian's rightful task is to distil experience as a medicinal warning for the future generations, not to distil a drug.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#20. War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#22. One direct approach had, by its vain cost, done much to undo the aggregate advantage which indirect approaches alone had built up. And it is not the least significant feature that the issue was finally settled, in the reverse way, by yet another example of the indirect approach.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#23. But Quebec is an illuminating example of the truth that a decision is produced even more by the mental and moral dislocation of the command than by the physical dislocation of its forces.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#24. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#30. 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
#32. It is thus more potent, as well as more economical, to disarm the enemy than to attempt his destruction by hard fighting ... A strategist should think in terms of paralysing, not of killing.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#37. Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#38. For there is nothing more intolerable to mankind than suspense; when a thing is once decided, men can but endure whatever out of the catalogue of evils it is their misfortune to undergo.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#39. Epaminondas himself fell in the moment of victory, and in his death contributed not the least of his lessons to subsequent generations-by an exceptionally dramatic and convincing proof that an army and a state succumb quickest to paralysis of the brain.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#40. For Caesar met failure each time he relied on the direct, and retrieved it each time he resorted to the indirect.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#41. 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
#42. No man of action has more completely attained the point of view of the scientific historian, who observes the movements of mankind with the same detachment as a bacteriologist observes bacilli under a microscope and yet with a sympathy that springs from his own common manhood. In
B.H. Liddell Hart
#43. 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 Hart
#44. I used to think that the causes of war were predominantly economic. I came to think that they were more psychological. I am now coming to think that they are decisively "personal," arising from the defects and ambitions of those who have the power to influence the currents of nations.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#48. 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.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#49. 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.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#50. [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
#51. 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
#52. The military weapon is but one of the means that serve the purposes of war: one out of the assortment which grand strategy can employ.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#53. Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes - so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil - nothing is so self-blinding.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#54. Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#55. While hitting one must guard ... In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#56. For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#57. To foster the people's willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#58. No man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity, nor the incapacity of will.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#59. Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#60. It was a strategic victory as bloodless for the defeated as for the victor-and the less men slain on the other side, the more potential adherents and recruits for Caesar. Despite the substitution of manoeuvre for direct assaults upon his enemy the campaign had cost him only six weeks of his time.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#61. The nearer the cutting off point lies to the main force of the enemy, the more immediate the effect; whereas the closer to the strategic base it takes place, the greater the effect.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#62. The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#63. The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace-this sentence
B.H. Liddell Hart
#64. Thus through the folly of a single hot-headed general, whose offensive spirit was not balanced by judgment, the Empire suffered a blow from which it never recovered-although it had sufficient power of endurance to survive, in a diminished form, for a further four hundred years.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#65. 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.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#66. 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
#67. 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.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#68. 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.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#69. 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
#70. Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#71. With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#72. The effect to be sought is the dislocation of the opponent's mind and dispositions - such an effect is the true gauge of an indirect approach.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#73. 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
#74. Thus an excess of directness and a want of art, in the second phase, robbed Caesar of his chance of ending the war in one campaign, and condemned him to four more years of obstinate warfare all round the Mediterranean basin.
B.H. Liddell Hart
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