Strategy Quotes

“For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“It would seem that Caesar's recurrent and deep-rooted fault was his concentration in pursuing the objective immediately in front of his eyes to the neglect of his wider object. Strategically he was an alternating Jekyll and Hyde.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“But time and surprise are the two most vital elements in war.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“For Caesar met failure each time he relied on the direct, and retrieved it each time he resorted to the indirect.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“The principles of war are the same as those of a siege. Fire must be concentrated on one point, and as soon as the breach is made, the equilibrium is broken and the rest is nothing.'
Subsequent military theory has put the accent on the first clause instead of on the last: in particular, on the words 'one point' instead of on the word 'equilibrium'. The former is but a physical metaphor, whereas the latter expresses the actual psychological result which ensures 'that the rest is nothing'. His own emphasis can be traced in the strategic course of his campaigns.

The word 'point' even, has been the source of much confusion, and more controversy. One school has argued that Napoleon meant that the concentrated blow must be aimed at the enemy's strongest point, on the ground that this, and this only, ensures decisive results. For if the enemy's main resistance be broken, its rupture will involve that of any lesser opposition. This argument ignores the factor of cost, and the fact that the victor may be too exhausted to exploit his success-so that even a weaker opponent may acquire a relatively higher resisting power than the original. The other school-better imbued with the idea of economy of force, but only in the limited sense of first costs-has contended that the offensive should be aimed at the enemy's weakest point. But where a point is obviously weak this is usually because it is remote from any vital artery or nerve centre, or because it is deliberately weak to draw the assailant into a trap.

Here, again illumination comes from the actual campaign in which Bonaparte put this maxim into execution. It clearly suggests that what he really meant was not 'point', but 'joint'-and that at this stage of his career he was too firmly imbued with the idea of economy of force to waste his limited strength in battering at the enemy's strong point. A joint, however, is both vital and vulnerable.

It was at this time too, that Bonaparte used another phrase that has subsequently been quoted to justify the most foolhardy concentrations of effort against the main armed forces of the enemy. 'Austria is our most determined enemy....Austria overthrown, Spain and Italy fall of themselves. We must not disperse our attacks but concentrate them.' But the full text of the memorandum containing this phrase shows that he was arguing, not in support of the direct attack upon Austria, but for using the army on the frontier of Piedmont for an indirect approach to Austria.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Belisarius had developed a new-style tactical instrument with which he knew that he might count on beating much superior numbers, provided that he could induce his opponents to attack him under conditions that suited his tactics. For that purpose his lack of numbers, when not too marked, was an asset, especially when coupled with an audaciously direct strategic offensive. His strategy was thus more psychological than logistical. He knew how to provoke the barbarian armies of the West into indulging their natural instinct for direct assault; with the more subtle and skillful Persians he was able at first to take advantage of their feeling of superiority to the Byzantines, and later, when they learnt respect for him, he exploited their wariness as a means of outmanoeuvring them psychologically.

He was a master of the art of converting his weakness into strength; and the opponent's strength into a weakness. His tactics, too, had the essential characteristic of the indirect approach-that of getting the opponent off balance, so that a joint becomes exposed and can be dislocated.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Epaminondas himself fell in the moment of victory, and in his death contributed not the least of his lessons to subsequent generations-by an exceptionally dramatic and convincing proof that an army and a state succumb quickest to paralysis of the brain.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Avoid a frontal attack on a long established position; instead, seek to turn it by flank movement, so that a more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of truth. But, in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth-for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into untruth.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“While many lessons can be found in Frederick's campaigns, the main one would appear to be that his indirectness was too direct. To express this in another way, he regarded the indirect approach as a matter of pure manoeuvre with mobility, instead of a combination of manoeuvre with mobility and surprise. Thus, despite all his brilliance, his economy of force broke down.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Frederick consistently used his central position to concentrate against one fraction of the enemy, and he always employed tactics of indirect approach. Thereby he gained many victories. But his tactical indirect approach was geometrical rather than psychological-unprepared by the subtler forms of surprise favoured by Scipio-and for all their executive skill, these manoeuvres were narrow. The opponent might be unable to meet the following blow, owing to the inflexibility of his mind or his formations, but the blow itself did not fall unexpectedly.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“One direct approach had, by its vain cost, done much to undo the aggregate advantage which indirect approaches alone had built up. And it is not the least significant feature that the issue was finally settled, in the reverse way, by yet another example of the indirect approach.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Thus through the folly of a single hot-headed general, whose offensive spirit was not balanced by judgment, the Empire suffered a blow from which it never recovered-although it had sufficient power of endurance to survive, in a diminished form, for a further four hundred years.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“For there is nothing more intolerable to mankind than suspense; when a thing is once decided, men can but endure whatever out of the catalogue of evils it is their misfortune to undergo.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“The strategy of Fabius was not merely an evasion of battle to gain time, but calculated for its effect on the morale of the enemy-and, still more, for its effect on their potential allies. It was thus primarily a matter of war-policy, or grand strategy. Fabius recognized Hannibal's military superiority too well to risk a military decision. While seeking to avoid this, he aimed by military pin-pricks to wear down the invaders' endurance and, coincidentally, prevent their strength being recruited from the Italian cities or their Carthaginian base. The key condition of the strategy by which this grand strategy was carried out was that the Roman army should keep always to the hills, so as to nullify Hannibal's decisive superiority in cavalry. Thus this phase became a duel between the Hannibalic and the Fabian forms of the indirect approach.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea, but the degree of resistance can be diminished-by giving thought not only to the aim but to the method of approach.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others’ experience.’ This saying, quoted of Bismarck,”
― B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy

“From Bourcet he learnt the principle of calculated dispersion to induce the enemy to disperse their own concentration preparatory to the swift reuniting of his own forces. Also, the value of a 'plan with several branches', and of operating in a line which threatened alternative objectives. Moreover, the very plan which Napoleon executed in his first campaign was based on one that Bourcet had designed half a century earlier.

Form Guibert he acquired an idea of the supreme value of mobility and fluidity of force, and of the potentialities inherent in the new distribution of an army in self-contained divisions. Guibert had defined the Napoleonic method when he wrote, a generation earlier: 'The art is to extend forces without exposing them, to embrace the enemy without being disunited, to link up the moves or the attacks to take the enemy in flank without exposing one's own flank.' And Guibert's prescription for the rear attack, as the means of upsetting the enemy's balance, became Napoleon's practice. To the same source can be traced Napoleon's method of concentrating his mobile artillery to shatter, and make a breach at, a key point in the enemy's front. Moreover, it was the practical reforms achieved by Guibert in the French army shortly before the Revolution which fashioned the instrument that Napoleon applied. Above all, it was Guibert's vision of a coming revolution in warfare, carried out by a man who would arise from a revolutionary state, that kindled the youthful Napoleon's imagination and ambition.

While Napoleon added little to the ideas he had imbibed, he gave them fulfilment. Without his dynamic application the new mobility might have remained merely a theory. Because his education coincided with his instincts, and because these in turn were given scope by his circumstances, he was able to exploit the full possibilities of the new 'divisional' system. In developing the wider range of strategic combinations thus possible Napoleon made his chief contribution to strategy.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Ostensibly it would seem that the further apart these enemy forces, the easier it must be to achieve a decisive success. In terms of time, space, and number, this is undoubtedly true. But once more the moral element intrudes. When the enemy forces are widely separated each is self-contained and tends to be consolidated by pressure. When they are close together they tend to coalesce and 'become members one of another', mutually dependent in mind, morale, and matter. The minds of the commanders affect each other, moral impressions are quickly transfused, and even the movements of each force easily hinder or disorganized those of others. Thus while the antagonist has less time and space for his action, the dislocating results of it take effect more quickly and easily. Further, when forces are close together the enemy's mere divergence from his approach to one of them may become an unexpected, and therefore truly indirect approach to another. In contrast, when forces are widely separated there is more time to prepare to meet, or avoid, the second blow of the army which is exploiting its central position.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“In the middle of the sixth century there was, however, a period when the Roman dominion was revived in the West-from the East. During Justinian's reign in Constantinople, his generals reconquered Africa, Italy, and southern Spain. That achievement, associated mainly with the name of Belisarius, is the more remarkable because of two features-first, the extraordinarily slender resources with which Belisarius undertook these far-reaching campaigns; second, his consistent use of the tactical defensive. There is no parallel in history for such a series of conquests by abstention from attack. They are the more remarkable since they were carried out by an army that was based on the mobile arm-and mainly compose of cavalry. Belisarius had no lack of audacity, but his tactics were to allow-or tempt-the other side to do the attacking. IF that choice was, in part, imposed on him by his numerical weakness, it was also a matter of subtle calculation, both tactical and psychological.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“It was a strategic victory as bloodless for the defeated as for the victor-and the less men slain on the other side, the more potential adherents and recruits for Caesar. Despite the substitution of manoeuvre for direct assaults upon his enemy the campaign had cost him only six weeks of his time.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Instead of making any further attempt to press the siege, Caesar devoted his energies to the creation of an artificial ford which enabled him to command both banks of the river Sicoris, on which Ilerda stood. This threatened tightening of his grip on their sources of supply induced Pompey's lieutenants to retire, while there was time. Caesar allowed them to slip away unpressed, but sent his Gallic cavalry to get on their rear and delay their march..Then, rather than assault the bridge held by the enemy's rear-guard, he took the risk of leading his legions through the deep ford, which was regarded as only traversable by cavalry and, marching in a wide circuit during the night, placed himself across the enemy's line of retreat. Even then he did not attempt battle, but was content to head off each attempt of the enemy to take a fresh line of retreat-using his cavalry to harass and delay them while his legions marched wide. Firmly holding in check the eagerness of his own men for battle, he at the same time encouraged fraternization with the men of the other side, who were growing more and m ore weary, hungry and depressed. Finally, when he had shepherded them back in the direction Ilerda, and forced them to take up a position devoid of water, they capitulated.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Thus an excess of directness and a want of art, in the second phase, robbed Caesar of his chance of ending the war in one campaign, and condemned him to four more years of obstinate warfare all round the Mediterranean basin.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Hovering in the enemy's neighbourhood, cutting off stragglers and foraging parties, preventing them from gaining any permanent base, Fabius remained an elusive shadow on the horizon, dimming the glamour of Hannibal's triumphal progress. Thus Fabius, by his immunity from defeat, thwarted the effect of Hannibal's previous victories upon the minds of Rome's Italian allies and checked them from changing sides. This guerrilla type of campaign also revived the spirit of the Roman troops while depressing the Carthaginians who, having ventured so far from home, were the more conscious of the necessity of gaining an early decision.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“But Polybius brought out the basic lesson in his reflection-'for as a ship, if you deprive it of its steersman, falls with all its crew into the hands of the enemy; so, with an army in war, if you outwit or out-manoeuvere its general, the whole will often fall into your hands'.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“When the campaign had opened the scales were heavily weighted and steeply tilted on the side of Antigonus. Rarely has the balance of fortune so dramatically changed. It would seem clear that Antigonus's balance had been upset by the indirect approach which Cassander planned. This dislocated the mental balance of Antigonus, the moral balance of his troops and his subjects, and the physical balance of his military dispositions.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Then, in 333 B.C., he turned south through the Cilician 'Gates' on the direct route towards Syria, where Darius III was concentrating to oppose him. Here, through the failure of his intelligence service and his own assumption that the Persians would await him in the plains, Alexander was strategically out-manoeuvred. While Alexander made a direct approach, Darius made an indirect-and, moving up the higher reaches of the Euphrates, came through the Amanic Gates onto Alexander's rear. He, who had been so careful to secure his chain of bases, now found himself cut off from them. But, turning back, he extricated himself at the battle of Issus by the superiority of his tactics as well as of his tactical instrument-no Great Captain applied this unexpectedness of indirectness more in his tactics.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“In his earlier campaigns his logistical strategy was direct and devoid of subtlety. The cause would appear to be, first, that in the youthful Alexander, bred to kingship and triumph, there was more of the Homeric hero than in the other great captains of history; and, still more perhaps, that he had such justifiable confidence in the superiority of his instrument and his own battle handling of it that he felt no need to dislocate preparatorily his adversaries' strategic balance. His lessons for posterity lie at the two poles-grand strategy and tactics.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“To move along the line of natural expectation consolidates the opponent's balance and thus increases his resisting power. In war, as in wrestling, the attempt to throw the opponent without loosening his foothold and upsetting his balance results in self-exhaustion, increasing in disproportionate ratio to the effective strain put upon him. Success by such a method only becomes possible through an immense margin of superior strength in some form-and, even so, tends to lose decisiveness. In most campaigns the dislocation of the enemy's psychological and physical balance has been the vital prelude to a successful attempt at his overthrow.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“Looking back on the stages by which various fresh ideas gained acceptance, it can be seen that the process was eased when they could be presented, not as something radically new, but as the revival in modern terms of a time-honoured principle or practice that had been forgotten. This required not deception, but care to trace the connection-since 'there is nothing new under the sun'. A notable example was the way that the opposition to mechanization was diminished by showing that the mobile armoured vehicle-the fast-moving tank-was fundamentally the heir of the armoured horseman, and thus the natural means of reviving the decisive role which cavalry had played in past ages.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy

“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.”
― B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy