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

No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are. Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.

Without local guides, your enemy employs the land as a weapon against you.

Go into emptiness, strike voids, bypass what he defends hit him where he does not expect you.

Who can determine where one ends and the other begins?

If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler's bidding.

Maneuvering with an army is advantageous; with an undisciplined multitude, most dangerous.