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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

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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
Training
Military
Indirect
Peace
Wider
Experience
Theoretical
May
Infinitely
Best
Practicals
Even
Practical
Valuable

More quotes by B. H. Liddell Hart

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The urge to gain release from tension by action is a precipitating cause of war.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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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
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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.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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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
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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.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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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
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The search for the truth for truth's sake is the mark of the historian.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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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
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Avoid self-righteousness like the devil- nothing is so self-blinding.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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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
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No man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity, nor the incapacity of will.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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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
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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
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The most consistently successful commanders, when faced by an enemy in a position that was strong naturally or materially, have hardly ever tackled it in a direct way. And when, under pressure of circumstances, they have risked a direct attack, the result has commonly been to blot their record with a failure.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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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
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While hitting one must guard ... In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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In war the chief incalculable is the human will, which manifests itself in resistance, which in turn lies in the province of tactics. Strategy has not to overcome resistance, except from nature. Its purpose is to diminish the possibility of resistance, and it seeks to fulfil this purpose by exploiting the elements of movement and surprise.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.
B. H. Liddell Hart