Who does not know the evils of war cannot appreciate its benefits.
Sun TzuRead
The natural formation of the country is the soldier's best ally
Interpretation
What this quote means
The landscape of a region can provide strategic advantages to soldiers in battle.
Sun Tzu emphasizes the importance of the natural geography of a land in warfare, suggesting that soldiers can gain great advantages by utilizing the terrain to their advantage. In essence, understanding and leveraging the environment can turn the tide of battle in favor of those who are aware of its nuances and complexities.
Themes
StrategyTerrainWarfareAdvantageGeography
In practice
Example use cases
During a military strategy seminar, when discussing the importance of battlefield advantages.
More from Sun Tzu
All quotes →Great results, can be achieved with small forces.
Sun TzuRead
To capture an enemies army is better than to destroy it.
Sun TzuRead
The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.
Sun TzuRead
You can ensure the success of your attacks if you only attack places that are undefended. You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked. Therefore, that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.
Sun TzuRead
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Sun TzuRead
Similar quotes
So many nurses had turned into emotionally disturbed handmaidens of the war, in their yellow-and-crimson uniforms with bone buttons.
Michael OndaatjeRead
A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we—you and I and others like us—have brought up from the slime.
John Edward WilliamsRead
War loses a great deal of its romance after a soldier has seen his first battle.
John S. MosbyRead
I pray for no more youth To perish before its prime; That Revenge and iron-heated War May fade with all that has gone before Into the night of time.
AeschylusRead
I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.
Abba EbanRead
If those who support aggressive war had seen a fraction of what I've seen, if they'd watched children fry to death from Napalm and bleed to death from a cluster bomb, they might not utter the claptrap they do.
John PilgerRead