Variant translations
Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities... It is best to win without fighting.
Source: The Art of War, Chapter III · Strategic Attack
“To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.”
Source: The Art of War, Chapter IV · Disposition of the Army
Original
见胜不过众人之所识,非善之善者也。
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Sun Tzu 68
ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosophe… -543–-495 BCRelated quotes
“Shameful it is to say, yet the common herd, if only we admit the truth, value friendships by their profit.”
Turpe quidem dictu, sed, si modo vera fatemur,
vulgus amicitias utilitate probat.
II, iii, 7-8; translation by Arthur Leslie Wheeler
Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters From the Black Sea)
“Victory is within our ready grasp…We are in reach of a famous victory”
"Abbott's 'famous victory' remark … was it gospel or not?" http://www.theage.com.au/national/abbotts-famous-victory-remark--was-it-gospel-or-not-20100623-ywq0.html in The Age, June 23, 2010.
2010
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Context: Reason... to suppose any production, worthy to be called a work of art, can be made without its use is foolish.... By the use of reason many mistakes in design may be avoided and many counterfeits of art readily detected.... Beauty alone is an excellent reason for many things, but when a design is in direct conflict with common sense it cannot be a work of art.
“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”
“Excellence is doing a common thing in an uncommon way.”
“What they had in common was mainly love of excellence and programming.”
Interview in Hackers — Wizards of the Electronic Age (1985)
1980s
Context: What they had in common was mainly love of excellence and programming. They wanted to make their programs that they used be as good as they could. They also wanted to make them do neat things. They wanted to be able to do something in a more exciting way than anyone believed possible and show "Look how wonderful this is. I bet you didn't believe this could be done."
Source: Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century (2000), Ch.8 Reality is a Shared Hallucination