“The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor can the wise lay plans against you.”
Source: The Art of War, Chapter VI · Weaknesses and Strengths
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Sun Tzu68
ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosophe… -543–-495 BCRelated quotes
Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.
p. 14
Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide
Source: The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide (2004), P. 53.
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician
Speech in the House of Commons (1766), quoted in Parliamentary History of England (London, 1813), vol. 6, col. 195.
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist
A reply to Olbers' 1816 attempt to entice him to work on Fermat's Theorem. As quoted in The World of Mathematics (1956) Edited by J. R. Newman
Jorge Luis Borges book The Analytical Language of John Wilkins
As translated by Lilia Graciela Vázquez
Variant: The impossibility of penetrating the divine scheme of the universe does not, however, dissuade us from planning human schemes, even though we know they must be provisional. The Analytic Language of Wilkins is not the least admirable of these schemes.
As translated by Will Fitzgerald
Other Inquisitions (1952), The Analytical Language of John Wilkins
Context: The impossibility of penetrating the divine pattern of the universe cannot stop us from planning human patterns, even though we are conscious they are not definitive. The analytic language of Wilkins is not the least admirable of such patterns.
“You can break a thing, but you cannot always guide it afterward into the shape you want.”
Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer
Source: Tithe