Quotes from B. H. Liddell Hart

The chief incalculable in war is the human will.

Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.

For even the best of peace training is more theoretical than practical experience ... indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.

It is only to clear from history that states rarely keep faith with each other, save in so far (and so long) as their promises seem to them to combine with their interests.

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.

To foster the people's willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power.

Avoid self-righteousness like the devil- nothing is so self-blinding.

Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.

The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.

A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.

Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.

Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.

A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.

For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.

The search for the truth for truth's sake is the mark of the historian.

In war, the chief incalculable is the human will.

If you want peace, understand war.

The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.

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.

Air Power is, above all, a psychological weapon - and only short-sighted soldiers, too battle-minded, underrate the importance of psychological factors in war.

War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.

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.

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.

If you wish for peace, understand war.