Basil Liddell Hart - Why don't we learn from history? (1944)

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Direct experience is inherently too limited to form an adequate foundation either for theory or for application. At the best it produces an atmosphere that is of value in drying and hardening the structure of thought. The greater value of indirect experience lies in its greater variety and extent. History is universal experience, the experience not of another, but of many others under manifold conditions.

Basil Liddell Hart

Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency.

Basil Liddell Hart

The predominance of moral factors in all military decisions. On them constantly turns the issue of war and battle. In the history of war they form the more constant factors, changing only in degree, whereas the physical factors are different in almost every war and every military situation.

Basil Liddell Hart

The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.

Basil Liddell Hart

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

Basil Liddell Hart