Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

B. H. Liddell Hart
Age: 74 †
Born: 1895
Born: October 31
Died: 1970
Died: January 29
Historian
Journalist
Military Historian
Writer
Paris
France
Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart
Basil Henry Liddell Hart
Weapons
Soldiers
Battle
Minded
Short
Weapon
War
Factors
Power
Psychological
Soldier
Underrate
Importance
Sighted
Air
Aviation

More quotes by B. H. Liddell Hart

Image
Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Image
War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Image
It is folly to imagine that the aggressive types, whether individuals or nations, can be bought off ... since the payment of danegeld stimulates a demand for more danegeld. But they can be curbed. Their very belief in force makes them more susceptible to the deterrent effect of a formidable opposing force.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Image
The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Avoid self-righteousness like the devil- nothing is so self-blinding.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
[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
Image
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
Image
Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Image
A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Image
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
Image
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