Selected quotes from the book "The Art of War for Security Managers: 10 Steps to Enhancing Organizational Effectiveness"
- For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
- The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leader-ship, so that they will share death and share life, without fear of danger.
- Warfare is the greatest affair of the state, the basis of life and death, the Way (Tao) to survival or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed.
- If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.
- The one who figures on victory at headquarters before even doing battle is the one with the most strategic factors on his side. The one who figures on inability to prevail at headquarters before doing battle is the one who has the least strategic factors on his side. The one with many strategic factors in his favor wins, the one with few strategic factors in his favor loses—how much more so for the one with no strategic factors in his favor. Observing this matter in this way, I can see who will win and who will lose.
- So the important thing in a military operation is victory, not persistence.
- The superior militarist strikes while schemes are being laid. The next best is to attack alliances. The next best is to attack the army. The lowest is to attack a city. Siege a city only as a last resort.
- The terrain is to be assessed in terms of distance, difficulty or ease of travel, dimension, and safety.
- The unorthodox and the orthodox give rise to each other, like a beginning-less circle—who could exhaust them?
- A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.
- Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy.
- A victorious army first wins and then seeks battle. A defeated army first battles and then seeks victory.
