Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

Therefore I say: know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.

There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.

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.

As water shapes its flow in accordance with the ground, so an army manages its victory in accordance with the situation of the enemy.

All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.

All battles are won before they start.