B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes

At the beginning of this century, people never questioned the effectiveness of war, never thought there could be real peace. Now, people are tired of war and see it as ineffective in solving anything.

Sweet is war to those who know it not.

From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. . . . War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated—ever.

How could we live without the sword?

You can’t have peace without a war.

To make peace, it is necessary to know how to make war.

Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.

We always prefer war on our own terms to peace on someone else's.

To build peace is difficult but to live without it is torment.

Those good at war aren't good at peace, and those good at peace aren't good at war.

Resort to force in the Great War (I) failed to bring tranquillity. Victory and defeat alike were sterile. That lesson the world should have learned.

Because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total - but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial.

The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending.

Peace is only better than war when it's not hell too. War being hell makes sense.

As far as I am concerned, war itself is immoral.

There can be no compromise with war.

Why is war such an easy option? Why does peace remain such an elusive goal? We know statesmen skilled at waging war, but where are those dedicated enough to humanity to find a way to avoid war

A smart soldier wants to know the causes of wars. Also how to end them. After all, war is the normal state of affairs, isn't it? Peace is the name of the ideal we deduce from the fact that there have been interludes between wars.

Peace is not sought in order to provoke war, but war is waged in order to attain peace.

For WAR, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to content by Battle is sufficiently known.... So the nature of War, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. Does that seem paradoxical? Well, war is not afraid of paradoxes.

War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.

I am a peace man except when I wish to fight.

It's very easy to get into a war, but I don't know how you extricate from one.

War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political.