“The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”

— Mao Zedong

A Single Spark Can Start A Prairie Fire https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_6.htm (1930)
He later wrote the similar quote "When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances; harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws." On Guerrilla Warfare https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1937/guerrilla-warfare/ch01.htm (1937), Chapter 1 - "What Is Guerrilla Warfare?"

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Mao Zedong 181

Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of… 1893–1976

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“Just as an enemy is more dangerous to a retreating army, so every trouble that fortune brings attacks us all the harder if we yield and turn our backs.”
Quemadmodum perniciosior est hostis fugientibus, sic omne fortuitum incommodum magis instat cedenti et averso.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXXVIII: On liberal and vocational studies

“There's always a temptation, in the middle of a long struggle, to seek the quiet life, to escape the duties and problems of the world, and to hope the enemy grows weary of fanaticism and tired of murder. This would be a pleasant world, but it's not the world we live in. The enemy is never tired, never sated, never content with yesterday's brutality. This enemy considers every retreat of the civilized world as an invitation to greater violence.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2005, Address to the National Endowment for Democracy (October 2005)

“The spirit is to attack quickly while the enemy is still shooting with bows or guns. The spirit is to win by "treading down" as we receive the enemy's attack.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book
Context: "To tread down the sword" is a principle often used in strategy. First, in large-scale strategy, when the enemy first discharges bows and guns and then attacks, it is difficult for us to attack if we are busy loading powder into our guns or notching our arrows. The spirit is to attack quickly while the enemy is still shooting with bows or guns. The spirit is to win by "treading down" as we receive the enemy's attack.
In single combat, we cannot get a decisive victory by cutting, with a "tee-dum tee-dum" feeling, in the wake of the enemy's attacking long sword. We must defeat him at the start of his attack, in the spirit of treading him down with the feet, so that he cannot rise again to the attack.

“It was the same with the whole Russian machine. Fear was the impulse. For them it was always safer to advance than retreat. Advance against the enemy and the bullet might miss you. Retreat, evade, betray and the bullet would never miss.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 27 : The Bleeding Heart

“We can retreat and retreat and let ourselves get backed into corners forever,” she’d said once. “Or we can go out and meet the enemy at the time
and place we choose. Not them.”

Okay, Tasha, I thought. Let’s see if your advice gets me killed.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

“The only true rule for cavalry is to follow the enemy as long as he retreats.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Statement to Colonel Thomas T. Munford (13 June 1862); as quoted in Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (1904) by George Francis Robert Henderson http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12233 Vol. I, Ch. XI p. 392

“Use your enemy's weaknesses to your advantage. On the other hand, if your enemy is too strong, retreat and act again on the day you conquer it.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

Turkish Wikipedia
https://quotestats.com/topic/attila-hun-quotes/

“To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiLR4sCgvnc
Context: But now, let’s give each other a chance.
It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric.
To lower the temperature.
To see each other again.
To listen to each other again.
To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy.
We are not enemies. We are Americans.

“America's enemy in the Islamic world is not a state we can crush with sanctions or an enemy we can defeat with force of arms. The enemy is a cause, a movement, an idea.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

“For we are not enemies, but brethren.”

Charles E. Nash (1844–1913) American politician

As quoted in Congressional Record https://web.archive.org/web/20160528155427/http://history.house.gov/People/Detail/18846, House, 44th Cong., 1st sess. (7 June 1876): pp. 3,667–3,668
Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives (1876)

“The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”

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Mao Zedong 181

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