Quote

If you wish for peace, understand 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
Peace
Wish
Understand
War

More quotes by B. H. Liddell Hart

Image
The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Image
Avoid self-righteousness like the devil- nothing is so self-blinding.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Image
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
Image
Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
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
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
Image
War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Image
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
Image
The urge to gain release from tension by action is a precipitating cause of war.
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 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
A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
B. H. Liddell Hart
Image
The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
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
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 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
Image
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
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
The search for the truth for truth's sake is the mark of the historian.
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