All warfare is based on deception.
兵者、詭道也。
Military Strategists
Sun Tzu
A 5th-century BCE Chinese military theorist whose treatise 'The Art of War' remains the most influential work on strategy ever written. His principles of deception, intelligence, and winning without fighting transcend warfare and have been adopted across business, diplomacy, and competitive strategy worldwide.
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Sun Tzu's Other Quotes
In war, I have heard of clumsy swiftness, but never seen clever delay.
In war there is no constant posture, as water has no constant form. He who can win by adapting to the enemy's changes may be called divine.
To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Related Quotes
Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.
-- Frederick II of Prussia
An action committed in anger is an action doomed to failure.
-- Genghis Khan
The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
-- Leo Tolstoy
To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
-- Sun Tzu
When the cunning rabbit is dead, the hunting dog is boiled.
-- Han Xin
I came as dew, I vanish as dew — all that I was, all I achieved at Naniwa, is a dream within a dream.
-- Toyotomi Hideyoshi