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B.H. Liddell Hart Quotes

Total quotes: 9
“This 'brilliant' success is in reality a case where strategy not merely paved the way for a victory in battle but executed it—where indeed, the victory was merely the last act of the strategy approach.”
— B.H. Liddell Hart, Communicating for Managerial Effectiveness
Tagged: strategy
“When one remembers that there were about 200 serving British generals and about 2,000 living British generals and at least 20,000 generals in the world, the position does not appear to have much eminence.”
— B.H. Liddell Hart, On Art and War and Terror
Tagged: Life
“As so often in history, a direct doubling of strength meant not a doubling but a halving of the effect—through simplifying the enemy's 'lines of expectation.'”
— B.H. Liddell Hart, Communicating for Managerial Effectiveness
Tagged: strategy
“In strategy, the longest way around is the shortest way home.”
— B.H. Liddell Hart, Communicating for Managerial Effectiveness
Tagged: strategy
“Quick eyed, ingenious, nervously active in mind and body, sleeplessly alert on every occasion, with a clear idea of what he wanted and an unyielding determination to have it, he made himself and everybody around him uncomfortable till his demands were gratified.”
— B.H. Liddell Hart, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American
Tagged: Life
“But time and surprise are the two most vital elements in war.”
— B.H. Liddell Hart, Communicating for Managerial Effectiveness
Tagged: strategy
“To move along the line of natural expectation consolidates the opponent equilibrium, and, by stiffening it, augments his resisting power. In war, as in wrestling, the attempt to throw an opponent without loosening his foothold and balance can only result in self-exhaustion, increasing in disproportionate ratio to the effective strain put upon him. Victory by such a method can only be possible through immense margin of superior strength in some form, and even so, tends to lose decisiveness.”
— B.H. Liddell Hart, The Strategy Of Indirect Approach
Tagged: The Process
“In seeking to upset the enemy's balance, a commander must not lose his own balance. He needs to have the quality, which Voltaire described as the keystone of Marlborough's success– 'the calm courage in the midst of tumult, that serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a cool head.' But to it he must have the quality for which the French have found the most aptly descriptive phrase–'le sense du practible.' The sense of what is possible, and what is not possible–tactically and administratively. The combination of both [of] these two 'guarding' qualities might be epitomized as the power of cool calculation. The sands of history are littered with wrecks of finely conceived plans that expired for want of this ballast.”
— B.H. Liddell Hart, The Strategy Of Indirect Approach
Tagged: Nerve
“To move along the line of natural expectation consolidates the opponent equilibrium, and, by stiffening it, augments his resisting power. In war, as in wrestling, the attempt to throw an opponent without loosening his foothold and balance can only result in self-exhaustion, increasing in disproportionate ratio to the effective strain put upon him. Victory by such a method can only be possible through immense margin of superior strengthen in some form, and even so, tends to lose decisiveness.”
— B.H. Liddell Hart, The Strategy Of Indirect Approach
Tagged: Obstacles
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