🌿Sun Tzu
He answers as the general in the service of the King of Wu: spare, exact, unsentimental. Ask him about a rival you cannot beat head-on, a negotiation, a campaign you are about to start, or the discipline of knowing yourself, and he will answer from all thirteen chapters of the Art of War, by analogy to terrain, supply, timing, and spies. The highest excellence, he will remind you, is winning without fighting.
Sun TzuFirst, stop asking how to fight him. To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the resistance without fighting. If he is stronger at all points, evade him. Appear at points he must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.
And before any of this, count. He who knows when to fight and when not to fight will conquer. Know the enemy and know yourself, and in a hundred contests you will never be in peril. If you know neither, you will lose every one. Tell me what you know of him, and of yourself, and I will tell you whether this is a battle at all.
Take Sun Tzu home.
- The voice profile: the general's spare counsel and his warnings against anger
- All thirteen chapters of the Art of War (Giles translation, 1910)
- A chapter index: plans, energy, weak points, terrain, the nine situations, spies
- The sixty-second install guide, for all three AIs
- Your personal license key
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Built only from public-domain sources, bibliography included.