A Quote by Sun Tzu

If I determine the enemy's disposition of forces while I have no perceptible form, I can concentrate my forces while the enemy is fragmented. The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it nor the wise make plans against it.

Sun Tzu

Quote Topics

Against Approaches Cannot Concentrate Deepest Deployment Determine Discern Disposition Enemy Even Forces Form Fragmented Make Military Nor Pinnacle Plans Spy Then While Wise

Quote Author

Sun Tzu
Chinese - Philosopher

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

If I am able to determine the enemy's dispositions while at the same time I conceal my own, then I can concentrate and he must divide.

Sun Tzu

Form and formless are intertwined in this world. The formless can only be expressed in form and form can only be thought with the formless.

Swami Vivekananda

What do we mean by the defeat of the enemy? Simply the destruction of his forces, whether by death, injury, or any other means-either completely or enough to make him stop fighting. . . . The complete or partial destruction of the enemy must be regarded as the sole object of all engagements. . . . Direct annihilation of the enemy's forces must always be the dominant consideration.

Carl von Clausewitz

In the face of death, especially violent death, things don't make sense anymore. So death is the dissolution of either physical form or psychological form. And when a form dissolves, always something shines through that had been obscured by the form. This is the formless One Life, the formless One Consciousness.

Eckhart Tolle

The most effective method of propaganda directed at the enemy forces is to release captured soldiers and give the wounded medical treatment... Whenever soldiers of enemy forces are captured, we immediately conduct propaganda among them...This immediately knocks the bottom out of the enemy's slander that the Communist bandits kill everyone on sight.

Mao Zedong

The formless cannot be based on the form. The form needs to be based on the formless.

John de Ruiter

Air forces offered the possibility of striking a the enemy's economic and moral centres without having first to achieve 'the destruction of the enemy's main forces on the battlefield'. Air-power might attain a direct end by indirect means - hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it.

B. H. Liddell Hart

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.

Sun Tzu

The whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world; and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed from the inorganic to the organic from blind force to conscious intellect and will.

Thomas Huxley

Powerful, yes, that is the word that I constantly rolled on my tongue, I dreamed of absolute power, the kind that forces others tokneel, that forces the enemy to capitulate, finally converting him, and the more the enemy is blind, cruel, sure of himself, buried in his conviction, the more his admission proclaims the royalty of he who has brought on his defeat.

Albert Camus

American imperialism has suffered a stunning defeat in Indochina. But the same forces are engaged In another war against a much less resilient enemy, the American people. Here, the prospects for success are much greater. The battleground is ideological, not military. At stake are the lessons to be drawn from the American war in Indochina; the outcome will determine the course and character of new imperial ventures.

Noam Chomsky

An enemy might at any time become a friend, but while an enemy was an enemy he should be trodden on and persecuted.

Anthony Trollope

The enemy of the black is not the white. The enemy of capitalist is not communist, the enemy of homosexual is not heterosexual, the enemy of Jew is not Arab, the enemy of youth is not the old, the enemy of hip is not redneck, the enemy of Chicano is not gringo and the enemy of women is not men. We all have the same enemy. The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind. The enemy is every expert who practices technocratic manipulation, the enemy is every proponent of standardization and the enemy is every victim who is so dull and lazy and weak as to allow himself to be manipulated and standardized.