Art Of War Enemy Quotes

#1. These are the six ways of courting defeat - neglect to estimate the enemy's strength; want of authority; defective training; unjustifiable anger; nonobservance of discipline; failure to use picked men ...

Sun Tzu

#2. Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.

Carl Von Clausewitz

#3. Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.

Sun Tzu

#4. The good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.

Sun Tzu

#5. Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans, the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces, the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field, and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.

Sun Tzu

#6. If your enemy has the power to see into the future, make sure you are the author of that future.

Lionel Suggs

#7. 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

Sun Tzu

#8. If you are situated at a great distance from the enemy, and the strength of the two armies is equal, it is not easy to provoke a battle, and fighting will be to your disadvantage.

Sun Tzu

#9. A clever general ... avoids an army when its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish and inclined to return. This is the art of studying moods. Disciplined and calm, he awaits the appearance of disorder and hubbub among the enemy. This is the art of retaining self-possession.

Sun Tzu

#10. The greatest remedy that is used against a plan of the enemy is to do voluntarily what he plans that you do by force.

Niccolo Machiavelli

#11. In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.

Sun Tzu

#12. Fierce language and pretentious advances are signs that the enemy is about to retreat.

Sun Tzu

#13. The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.

Ulysses S. Grant

#14. In a position of this sort, even though the enemy should offer us an attractive bait, it will be advisable not to stir forth, but rather to retreat, thus enticing the enemy in his turn; then, when part of his army has come out, we may deliver our attack with advantage.

Sun Tzu

#15. In the art of war, if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the approaching battles. But if you know only yourself and not the enemy, for every victory, there will also be defeat.

Emily Thorne

#16. The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.

Sun Tzu

#17. It is a doctrine of war not to assume the enemy will not come, but rather to rely on one's readiness to meet him; not to presume that he will not attack, but rather to make one's self invincible.

Sun Tzu

#18. One who has few must prepare against the enemy; one who has many makes the enemy prepare against him.

Sun Tzu

#19. Malone kept listening, a saying from Sun Tzu's ART OF WAR spinning through his mind. When your enemy is in the process of destroying himself, stay out of the way.

Steve Berry

#20. Rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him

Sun Tzu

#21. With regard to ground of this nature, be before the enemy in occupying the raised and sunny spots, and carefully guard your line of supplies. Then you will be able to fight with advantage.

Sun Tzu

#22. When the higher officers are angry and insubordinate, and on meeting the enemy give battle on their own account from a feeling of resentment, before the commander-in-chief can tell whether or not he is in a position to fight, the result is ruin.

Sun Tzu

#23. And therefore those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle and are not brought there by him.

Sun Tzu

#24. Any army which does not train to use all the weapons, all the means and methods of warfare that the enemy possesses, or may possess, is behaving in an unwise or even criminal manner. This applies to politics even more than it does to the art of war.

Vladimir Lenin

#25. If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent the enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground. All we need to do is to throw something odd and unaccountable in his way.

Sun Tzu

#26. If the enemy leaves a door open, you must rush in.

Sun Tzu

#27. When the enemy is relaxed, make them toil. When full, starve them. When settled, make them move.

Sun Tzu

#28. The art of war," I told him, "is to make the enemy do your bidding.

Bernard Cornwell

#29. It is good to know one's enemy.
It is better to know one's self.

Max Hawthorne

#30. Why,' said he, 'does not the emperor, who has devised so many clever and efficient modes of improving the art of war, organize a regiment of lawyers, judges and legal practitioners, sending them in the hottest fire the enemy could maintain, and using them to save better men?

Alexandre Dumas

#31. The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Sun Tzu

#32. To use the enemy's weapon is to play the enemy's game ... speak the truth and hear the truth.

Ursula K. Le Guin

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

Sun Tzu

#34. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.

Sun Tzu

#35. From a position of this sort, if the enemy is unprepared, you may sally forth and defeat him. But if the enemy is prepared for your coming, and you fail to defeat him, then, return being impossible, disaster will ensue.

Sun Tzu

#36. To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape.

Sun Tzu

#37. With regard to narrow passes, if you can occupy them first, let them be strongly garrisoned and await the advent of the enemy.

Sun Tzu

#38. You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

Napoleon Bonaparte