Someone unfamiliar with the mountains and forests cannot advance [the team]. One who does not employ local guides cannot gain the advantage.

In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them.

Ground which can be abandoned but is hard to re-occupy is called entangling.

Management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of organization.

The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; and his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few.

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle

A kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.