THE ARTICLE · 7 MIN
The Art of War is a short Chinese book on strategy, traditionally credited to a general called Sun Tzu, “Master Sun”. Here are its big ideas in our own words, what is known about who wrote it and when, which famous Sun Tzu lines are really in the text, and some small practices drawn from it.
About the book
The Chinese title is Sunzi bingfa, “The methods of war by Master Sun”; Sun Tzu is an older spelling of Sunzi. It has 13 chapters, each a run of short numbered sayings, from “Laying Plans” to “The Use of Spies”. Chapter 11, “The Nine Situations”, is about kinds of ground; chapter 8’s heading, Giles notes, “means literally ‘The Nine Variations’”.
The tradition comes from the historian Sima Qian. His Shiji, in Giles’s translation, opens: “Sun Tzŭ Wu was a native of the Ch’i State. His Art of War brought him to the notice of Ho Lu, King of Wu.” King Helü, as the name is now spelled, began his reign in 514 BC. The Shiji then tells a story about him: to prove his method, Sun Wu drilled 180 palace women and had the king’s two favourite concubines executed when the drill was ignored.
Doubts are old. Giles notes that the Zuo zhuan, “the greatest contemporary record” of the period, “makes no mention whatsoever of Sun Wu”, and he quotes the Song-dynasty scholar Ye Shi (Yeh Shui-hsin in Giles’s spelling) calling the story of the women “utterly preposterous and incredible”. Giles himself defended an early book: from its references to the war with Yüeh he dated it between 505 and 473 BC, and argued that it “was already in existence towards the end of the 5th century B.C.” The sinologist Ulrich Theobald summarises the modern view: a 5th-century draft, later revised, so that the received version is “a product from the Warring States period”, the era of competing states that ended in 221 BCE.
In 1972 bamboo texts excavated from a Han-dynasty tomb at Yinqueshan, in Shandong, included the Sunzi bingfa, along with a separate book by Sun Bin, a later strategist. The tomb copy is “somewhat different from the received version”, Theobald writes, but it shows the book was being copied in the Han dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE).
What we read: Lionel Giles’s 1910 translation, Sun Tzŭ on The Art of War, “with Introduction and Critical Notes”, in full on Project Gutenberg (eBook #132), including his long introduction; and the Chinese text on Wikisource for the verses we discuss. Quotations are Giles’s, cited by his chapter and verse numbers (III.18 is chapter 3, verse 18).
The big ideas
1. Plan before you fight
The second verse calls war “a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin” (I.2). The book’s first chapter ends with calculation: “the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought” (I.26), and “many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat”.
2. Know both sides
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles” (III.18). The verse weighs the two halves equally: knowing yourself but not the enemy brings “a defeat” for every victory, and knowing neither means you “will succumb in every battle”.
3. The best victory is the one without a battle
Chapter III ranks the options. Taking a state “whole and intact” is better than shattering it (III.1); to “fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence” (III.2); and “the highest form of generalship is to baulk the enemy’s plans” (III.3). And “the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities” (III.3).
4. Long wars ruin the winner too
“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare” (II.6). Giles notes that chapter II, despite its title, is “primarily a consideration of ways and means”: what a campaign costs the state that wages it.
5. Surprise and misdirection
“All warfare is based on deception” (I.18). The next verse spells it out: “when able to attack, we must seem unable” (I.19). Later: “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt” (VII.19).
6. Water as a model
Tactics, the book says, are “like unto water” (VI.29): water avoids high ground and runs downhill, so an army should follow “the way … to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak” (VI.30). And “just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions” (VI.32).
7. Anger is a bad general
“No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique” (XII.18). The reason follows: anger may change to gladness, “but a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being” (XII.20–21).
8. Information comes from people
The last chapter is about spies. Foreknowledge “cannot be elicited from spirits” (XIII.5); “Knowledge of the enemy’s dispositions can only be obtained from other men” (XIII.6). It is a plain statement that good information has to be gathered from people, not divined.
What holds up
The core lines are in the text: the hundred battles, winning without fighting, winning first and then seeking battle, and deception. Some lines shared under his name are not: the friends-and-enemies line comes from a 1974 film, and the line about chaos and opportunity is not in the text in those words, though I.20 and VII.30 speak of making use of an enemy’s disorder. Another line credited to him, “Opportunities multiply as they are seized”, is not in Giles’s translation either, as our earlier article on Sun Tzu in business found. Who wrote the book, and when, is still argued over. The rows below give each claim, the verdict and the source.
From the battlefield to the boardroom
The book is about war between states. Business readers have adapted it for decades: in 1996, for example, Oxford University Press published Mark R. McNeilly’s Sun Tzu and the Art of Business, subtitled “six strategic principles for managers”. Those readings are interpretations. In our reading, some fit well, such as planning, knowing your own position and avoiding long, costly contests. Others fit badly: deception aimed at an enemy army is not a model for dealing with customers or partners, who are not the enemy.
How to use it
These are practices drawn from the text. They are readings of a book about war, not tested methods.
- A calculation before the commitment. I.26 puts the counting before the battle. One way to apply it is to write down, before a big decision, what each side has going for it, and to notice when the list is short.
- Both halves of III.18. The verse gives equal weight to knowing yourself. A plan that describes the competition in detail and your own limits in one line is the half-knowledge it warns about.
- Looking for the outcome without the fight. Chapter III’s ranking suggests asking whether a contest can be settled by agreement, a better offer, or by making the other side’s plan unnecessary, before it is fought.
- A cooling-off rule. XII.18 and XII.20 are about anger. Waiting before acting on a decision made in anger is the modern version of not fighting “out of pique”.
- Checking the verse. If a “Sun Tzu” quote has no chapter and verse, the Giles text is free online and quick to search.
Who it’s for, and who can skip it
It suits readers interested in strategy, Chinese history or the source of lines they have heard quoted, and anyone who wants a classic they can read in an evening. Much of it is specific to ancient warfare: kinds of ground, attacking with fire, using spies. Readers looking for a business manual will find they are doing the translating themselves. A modern translation with notes helps; Giles’s is free and careful, but its notes are long and its English is old.
If you liked this
- The principles of Sun Tzu: The Art of War in business: seven of the book’s ideas, each with its verse, and what they might mean for a business.
- Machiavelli: what The Prince actually says, the other classic most often quoted as a guide to power.
- The Godfather: life lessons and quotes, where “keep your friends close” comes from.
Sources
- Sun Tzu (attributed), The Art of War, translated by Lionel Giles (1910), Project Gutenberg eBook #132: all quotations, verse numbers, Giles’s introduction and his translation of the Shiji.
- 孫子兵法 (the Chinese text), Wikisource.
- U. Theobald, “Sunzi bingfa” and “Sun Bin bingfa”, ChinaKnowledge.de.
- American Film Institute, “AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes”.
- M. R. McNeilly, Sun Tzu and the Art of Business (Oxford University Press, 1996), Open Library record.
Checked October 2026. What we read: Giles’s 1910 translation in full, with his introduction and notes, searched for every quotation on this page; the Chinese text of the verses we discuss; Theobald’s encyclopedia entries on the book and on Sun Bin; the AFI list; and the Open Library record of McNeilly’s book. We did not read the Yinqueshan slips or a modern edition of them, so what we say about them rests on Theobald.
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