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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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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
Sought
Offensive
Profit
Military
Growing
Experience
Defensive
Power
Skillful
Even
Commanders
More quotes by B. H. Liddell Hart
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
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
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
War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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
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
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
Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
B. H. Liddell Hart
No man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity, nor the incapacity of will.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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
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
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
[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
The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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
While hitting one must guard ... In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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
The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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
Avoid self-righteousness like the devil- nothing is so self-blinding.
B. H. Liddell Hart