B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes

If the enemy has occupied them before you, do not follow him, but retreat and try to entice him away.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

This enemy of peace in the world today is unlike any we have seen in the past, and our military is learning from, and building on, previous successes while carrying peace and freedom into the future.

Our national aims can be realized only by military means. The matter needs no further elaboration or interpretation.

Give your opponent an out. Look at the crises from his point of view.... Try to pick an option that achieves your purpose at minimal cost to him—military, political or otherwise.

If you read any sort of, like, military general autobiographies or biographies, most of them never wanted to fight, you know? It's necessary. War is necessary.

He that makes a good war makes a good peace.

In all their wars against the French they [the Americans] never showed such conduct, attention and perseverance as they do now.

[Barack Obama] is sending more troops [to Afghanistan], but they have also realized that we are not going to win that war through guns and tanks. We have to engage the neighbors, and it is good that there is a non-military strategy in addition to a military strategy. It is, at least, encouraging. Whether it will work or not, the jury is still put.

Whenever you have a possibility of going in two ways, either for peace or for war, for peaceful methods of for military methods, in the present age there is a strong prejudice for the peaceful ones. War seldom ever leads to good results.

The most fundamental paradox is that if we're never to use force, we must be prepared to use it and to use it successfully. We Americans don't want war and we don't start fights. We don't maintain a strong military force to conquer or coerce others. The purpose of our military is simple and straightforward: we want to prevent war.

To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape.

It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war.

Do not press an enemy at bay.

We desire peace. However, if imperialism insists on fighting a war, we will have no alternative but to take the firm resolution to fight to the finish before going ahead with our construction. If you are afraid of war day in day out, what will you do if war eventually comes? First, I said that the East Wind is prevailing over the West Wind and war will not break out, and now I have added these explanations about the situation in case war should break out. Both possibilities have thus been taken into account.

We must be very careful not to assign this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations

According to true military art, one should never push one's enemy to the point of despair, because such a state multiplies his strength and increases his courage which had already been crushed and failing, and because there is no better remedy for the health of beaten and overwhelmed men than the absence of all hope.

A war put off is not a war avoided.

History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. To keep the peace, we and our allies must be strong enough to convince any potential aggressor that war could bring no benefit, only disaster.

From a position of this sort, if the enemy is unprepared, you may sally forth and defeat him. But if the enemy is prepared for your coming, and you fail to defeat him, then, return being impossible, disaster will ensue.

If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.