Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuvering for advantageous positions.

When envoys are sent with compliments in their mouths, it is a sign that the enemy wishes for a truce. If the enemy's troops march up angrily and remain facing ours for a long time without either joining battle or removing demands, the situation is one that requires great vigilance and circumspection. To begin by bluster, but afterward to take fright at the enemy's numbers, shows a supreme lack of intelligence.

The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities...It is best to win without fighting.

Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move.

Know the enemy and know yourself.

O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.

Unless you enter the tiger's lair, you cannot get hold of the tiger's cub's.