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The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.

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
Theory
Least
Lines
Indirect
Operates
Expectation
Expectations
Approach
Line

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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.
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The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.
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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.
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The urge to gain release from tension by action is a precipitating cause of war.
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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.
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The search for the truth for truth's sake is the mark of the historian.
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Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.
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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.
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Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
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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.
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The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
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War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.
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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.
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A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
B. H. Liddell Hart
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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
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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.
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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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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 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.
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[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