Quotes from B.H. Liddell Hart

Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency.

The practical value of history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the present on to the screen of the future.

If you wish for peace, understand war.

The historian's rightful task is to distil experience as a medicinal warning for the future generations, not to distil a drug.

The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace"-this sentence

No man of action has more completely attained the point of view of the scientific historian, who observes the movements of mankind with the same detachment as a bacteriologist observes bacilli under a microscope and yet with a sympathy that springs from his own common manhood. In

Too sane also, to anticipate the World War habit of digging in and clinging on to a depressed and depressing foothold under the enemy's "command." When

Decisive results come sooner from sudden shocks than from long- drawn pressure. Shocks throw the opponent off his balance. Pressure allows him time to adjust himself to it. That military lesson is closely linked with the general experience of history that human beings have an almost infinite power of accommo-' dation, to degradation of living conditions, so long as the process is gradual.

the statesman will soon find himself thwarted in some way or other, will deduce from this opposition a menace first to his plans, then to national prestige, and finally to the existence of the state itself — and so, regarding his country as the party attacked, will engage in a war of defence.

The vital influences are to be detected not in the formal documents compiled by rulers, ministers, and generals but in their marginal notes and verbal asides. Here are revealed their instinctive prejudices, lack of interest in truth for its own sake, and indifference to the exactness of statement and reception which is a safeguard against dangerous misunderstanding. I

We must face the fact that international relations are governed by interests and not by moral principles.

Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others' experience.' This saying, quoted of Bismarck,

Bismarck's aphorism throws a different and more encouraging light on the problem. It helps us to realize that there are two forms of practical experience, direct and indirect and that, of the two, indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.

Water shapes its course according to the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.

The enigma of history," thus we have styled him, though the title "Father of German unity," or again, "Father of grand strategy," would have been equally just--that is, if we can associate so homely a word as "father" with that cold unemotional mind, so utterly detached from the instincts and prejudices of normal humanity, soaring to a purely intellectual atmosphere too rarified for ordinary minds to breathe.

If you can doubt at points where other people feel no impulse to doubt, then you are making progress.

In one of the more penetrating criticisms written on this subject, George Orwell expressed a profound truth in saying that "the energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions.

wars would continue until the makers of gunpowder became professors of Greek, and he here had Gilbert Murray in mind, or the professors of Greek became the makers of gunpowder. And this, in turn, was derived from Plato's conclusion that the affairs of mankind would never go right until either the rulers became philosophers or the philosophers became the rulers.

Lord Acton's famous dictum "All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Truth is a spiral staircase. What looks true on one level may not be true on the next higher level. A complete vision must extend vertically as well as horizontally; not only seeing the parts in relation to one another but embracing the different planes.

He may realize that the world is a jungle. But if he has seen that it could be better for anyone if the simple principles of decency and kindliness were generally applied, then he must in honesty try to practice these consistently and to live, personally, as if they were general. In other words, he must follow the light he has seen.

Since he will be following it through a jungle, however, he should bear in mind the supremely practical guidance provided nearly two thousand years ago: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

All of us do foolish things, but the wiser realize what they do. The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error. That failure is a common affliction of authority.

For the tendency of all "governments" is to infringe the standards of decency and truth; this is inherent in their nature and hardly avoidable in their practice.