87 Quotes by 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.

While hitting one must guard ... In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.

With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.

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.

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.

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.

To ensure attaining an objective, one should have alternate objectives. An attack that converges on one point should threaten, and be able to diverge against another. Only by this flexibility of aim can strategy be attuned to the uncertainty of war.

Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.

As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.