"All warfare is based on deception.”
“In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.”
“Hence the saying: 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.”
“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.”
“To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.”
“Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.”
“Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him.”
“How victory may be produced for them out of the enemy’s own tactics—that is what the multitude cannot comprehend. All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out which victory is evolved.”
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
“A whole army may be robbed of its spirit; a commander-in-chief may be robbed of his presence of mind.”
“There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.”
“There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general: Recklessness, which leads to destruction; Cowardice, which leads to capture; a Hasty Temper, which can be provoked by insults; an Overdeveloped Sense of Honor, which is sensitive to shame; Over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him to worry and trouble. These are the five besetting sins of a general, ruinous to the conduct of war.”
“If in training soldiers commands are habitually enforced, the army will be well-disciplined; if not, its discipline will be bad. If a general shows confidence in his men but always insists on his orders being obeyed, the gain will be mutual.”
“If the enemy leaves a door open, you must rush in.”
“No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.”--Sun Tzu, Art of War
“[The social gospel], being evolutionary, it assumes the past as a part of its inheritance, like biological data, an accomplished fact, and if ails to realize that it is itself a destructive force, rapidly eroding the inheritance it assumes as fixed.”—R.J. Rushdoony, The Nature of the American System
“It is possible to pray in such a way that one does not transcend the world, in such a way that the divine is degraded to a functional part of the workaday world. Religion can be debased into magic. Then it is no longer devotion to the divine, but an attempt to master it. Prayer can be perverted in this way, into a sort of technique whereby life “under the dome” is feasible. Moreover, love too can assume a debased form in which all the powers of devotion are bent to serve the ends of a limited ego. That debasement springs from timid self-defense against the shock of the greater, deeper world that can be entered only by one who truly loves.”
“It is so true that the spiritual soul informs the whole of man’s nature that even when a man “vegetates” it is ultimately only possible because he is spiritual—a cabbage can’t vegetate.”
“For our sense of wonder, in the philosophical meaning of the word, is not aroused by enormous, sensational things—though that is what a dulled sensibility requires to provoke it to a sort of ersatz experience of wonder. A man who needs the unusual to make him wonder shows that he has lost the capacity to find the true answer to the wonder of being…To perceive all that is unusual and exceptional, all that is wonderful, in the midst of the ordinary things of everyday life, is the beginning of philosophy.”—Josef Pieper, The Philosophical Act
"Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises.”—G.K. Chesterton, “Lying in Bed” Tremendous Trifles
"Unless we presume at the same time that the powers of the federal government will be worse administered than those of the State government, there seems to be no room for the presumption of ill-will, disaffection, or opposition in the people. I believe it may be laid down as a general rule that their confidence in and their obedience to a government will commonly be proportioned to the goodness or badness of its administration."--Hamilton, The Federalist Papers
“Only three things are truly necessary in order to make life happy: the blessing of God, the benefit of books, and the benevolence of family and friends.” –Thomas Chalmers (source unknown)
“Envy is setting up a little idol of them in your heart and poking it with needles. But it never heals, because you’re poking your own soul.”—Jared Longshore
“The drama of human existence then lies in the fact that we can choose the right thing.”—Theo Wold
“When you become too humble to aspire, you stop being humble.”—Andrew Crapuchettes
“Evangelicals don’t like to build, we just like to paint with our gospel hue whatever the world has constructed.”—Chris Schlect
