“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”
Disputed
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Sun Tzu 68
ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosophe… -543–-495 BCRelated quotes

“What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.”
Book 2, chapter 4. Compare: "I say the very things that make the greatest Stir / An' the most interestin' things, are things that did n't occur", Sam Walter Foss, Things that did n't occur.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)

“Life is what you do while you're waiting to die.”
Fred Ebb, Zorba (1968)
Misattributed
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)