… is to do that which your enemy least wants you to do."?
I’ve Googled to no avail, so I suspect I might be either misquoting or perhaps even remembering something someone said to me IRL. But I haven’t read Sun Tzu or the like - is there something similar there?
I always attribute popular war quotes first to Sun Tsu, second to Patton.
Of course I can’t cite anything that states where this is from, so I’ll just run along now…
The first rule of war is know thine enemy, and I know this: cold kills broccolli! It’s so simple! All I need to do is build a machine to control the global environment. Forecast for tomorrow: a few sprinkles of genius with a chance of doom.
Stewie Griffin.
I’ve found a few links via Google that quote the line worded like this:
In those cases it’s attributed to Sun Tzu but I couldn’t find a link that was anywhere near authoratative. In 95% of the cases it’s another author quoting him within their work. I can’t say I feel 100% confident in it, it sounds like one of those quotes that got out there and without a source found itself linked to Sun Tzu without and reliable reason to do so.
In any case, you’re not alone in knowing it, but perhaps someone else will come along with a more concrete cite.
Just make sure you aren’t plagiarizing from so-called Murphy’s laws of combat or the 9 principles of war (neither which apply here except they tend to come up).
Isn’t the first rule of war: “Don’t talk about war”? Wait, no, that is something else.
Well, Sun Tzu does say:
Or for that matter, the 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed to Do in the U.S. Army.
Isn’t it “Don’t get involved in a land war in Asia”?