Sun Tzu Quotes

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.

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

If your opponent is of choleric temper, irritate him.

Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

Sweat more during peace: bleed less during war

The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

Invincibility lies in the defence; the possibility of victory in the attack.

If we know that our own men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the enemy is not open to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory.

Of all those in the army close to the commander none is more intimate than the secret agent; of all rewards none more liberal than those given to secret agents; of all matters none is more confidential than those relating to secret operations.

Prohibit the taking of omens, and do away with superstitious doubts. Then, until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared.

The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.

In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.

Those who are victorious plan effectively and change decisively. They are like a great river that maintains its course but adjusts its flow.