Quotes By Sun Tzu

Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?

If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.

To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.

All war is based on deception.

Now the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge.

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

The enlightened ruler is heedful, and the good general full of caution.

It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used.

When envoys are sent with compliments in their mouths, it is a sign that the enemy wishes for a truce.

There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.

There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.

Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.

It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results.

Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.

Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.

In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.

All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.