The Art of War The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu , a high - ranking military general , strategist and tactician . The text is composed of 13 chapters , each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare . It is commonly known to be the definitive work on military strategy and tactics of its time . It has been the most famous and influential of China ' s Seven Military Classics , and " for the last two thousand years it remained the most important military treatise in Asia , where even the common people knew it by name . " It has had an influence on Eastern and Western military thinking , business tactics , legal strategy and beyond . The book was first translated into the French language in 1772 by French Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie Amiot and a partial translation into English was attempted by British officer Everard Ferguson Calthrop in 1905 . The first annotated English language translation was completed and published by Lionel Giles in 1910 . Leaders as diverse as Mao Zedong , General Vo Nguyen Giap , General Douglas MacArthur and leaders of Imperial Japan have drawn inspiration from the work . Themes . Sun Tzu considered war as a necessary evil that must be avoided whenever possible . The war should be fought swiftly to avoid economic losses : " No long war ever profited any country : 100 victories in 100 battles is simply ridiculous . Anyone who excels in defeating his enemies triumphs before his enemy ' s threats become real " . According to the book , one must avoid massacres and atrocities because this can provoke resistance and possibly allow an enemy to turn the war in his favor . For the victor , " the best policy is to capture the state intact ; it should be destroyed only if no other options are available " . Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of positioning in military strategy . The decision to position an army must be based on both objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective beliefs of other , competitive actors in that environment . He thought that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through an established list , but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions . Planning works in a controlled environment ; but in a changing environment , competing plans collide , creating unexpected situations . The 13 chapters . " The Art of War " is divided into 13 chapters ( or " piān " ) ; the collection is referred to as being one " zhuàn " ( " whole " or alternatively " chronicle " ) . Timeline . Traditionalist viewpoint . Traditionalist scholars attribute the writings of Sun Tzu to the historical Sun Wu , who is recorded in both the " Records of the Grand Historian ( Shiji ) " and the " Spring and Autumn Annals " as having been active in Wu around the end of the sixth century BC , beginning in 512 BC . The traditional interpretation concludes that the text should therefore date from this period , and should directly reflect the tactics and strategies used and created by Sun Wu . The traditionalist approach assumes that only very minor revisions may have occurred shortly after Sun Wu ' s death , in the early fifth century BC , as the body of his writings may have needed to be compiled in order to form the complete , modern text . The textual support for the traditionalist view is that several of the oldest of the Seven Military Classics share a focus on specific literary concepts ( such as terrain classifications ) which traditionalist scholars assume were created by Sun Tzu . " The Art of War " also shares several entire phrases in common with the other " Military Classics " , implying that other texts borrowed from the " Art of War " , and / or that " The Art of War " borrowed from other texts . According to traditionalist scholars , the fact that " The Art of War " was the most widely reproduced and circulated military text of the Warring States period indicates that any textual borrowing between military texts must have been exclusively from " The Art of War " to other texts and not vice versa . The classical texts which most similarly reflect Sun Tzu ' s terms and phraseology are the " Wei Liaozi " and " Sun Bin ' s Art of War " . Later criticism . Skeptics to the traditionalist view within China have abounded since at least the time of the Song dynasty . Some , following Du Mu , accused " The Art of War ' s " first commentator , Cao Cao , of butchering the text . The criticisms of Cao Cao were based on a " Book of Han " bibliographical notation of a work composed of eighty - two sections that was attributed to Sun Tzu . The description of a work by Sun Tzu composed of eighty - two sections contrasts with the description of the " Art of War " from the " Records of the Grand Historian ( Shiji ) " , in which the " Art of War " is described as having thirteen sections ( the current number ) . Others doubted Sun Tzu ' s historical existence and claimed that the work must be a later forgery . Much of " The Art of War ' s " historical condemnation within China has been due to its realistic approach to warcraft : it advocates utilizing spies and deception . The advocacy of dishonest methods contradicted perceived Confucian values , making it a target of Confucian literati throughout later Chinese history . According to later Confucian scholars , Sun Tzu ' s historical existence was accordingly a late fabrication , unworthy of consideration except by the morally reprehensible . If the modern text of " The Art of War " reflects contrasting interpretations of the value in chivalry in warfare , the existence of these differing interpretations within the text supports the theory that the core of " The Art of War " was created by a figure ( for example : the historical Sun Tzu ) who existed at a time when chivalry was more highly valued ( i . e . , the Spring and Autumn period ) , and that the text was amended by his followers to reflect the realities of warfare in a subsequent , distinctly un - chivalric period ( i . e . , the Warring States period ) . Modern archaeological findings . On April 10 , 1972 , the Yinqueshan Han Tombs were accidentally unearthed by construction workers in Shandong . Scholars uncovered a nearly complete Western Han Dynasty ( 206 BC - 220 AD ) copy of " The Art of War " , known as the Yinqueshan Han Slips , which is almost completely identical to modern editions , lends support that " The Art of War " had achieved its current form by at least the early Han dynasty , and findings of less - complete copies dated earlier support the view that it existed in roughly its current form by at least the time of the mid - late Warring States . Because the archaeological evidence proves that " The Art of War " existed in its present form by the early Han dynasty , the Han dynasty record of a work of eighty - two sections attributed to Sun Tzu is assumed by modern historians to be either a mistake , or a lost work combining the existing " The Art of War " with biographical and dialectical material . Some modern scholars suggest that " The Art of War " must have existed in thirteen sections before Sun Tzu met the King of Wu , since the king mentions the number thirteen in the " Records of the Grand Historian ( Shiji ) " description of their meeting . Alternative viewpoints of origin . Some modern historians challenge the traditionalist interpretation of the text ' s history . Even if the possibility of later revisions is disregarded , the traditionalist interpretation that Sun Tzu created " The Art of War " himself ( " ex nihilo " ) , and that all other military scholars must have copied and borrowed from him , disregards the likelihood of any previous formal or literary tradition of tactical studies , despite the historical existence of over 2 , 000 years of Chinese warfare and tactical development before 500 BC . Because it is unlikely that Sun Tzu created China ' s entire body of tactical studies , " basic concepts and common passages seem to argue in favor of a comprehensive military tradition and evolving expertise , rather than creation " ex nihilo " . " One modern alternative to the traditionalist theory states that " The Art of War " achieved its current form by the mid - to - late Warring States ( the fourth - to - third century BC ) , centuries after the historical Sun Tzu ' s death . This interpretation relies on disparities between " The Art of War " ' s tactics and the historical conditions of warfare in the late Spring and Autumn period ( the late sixth century BC ) . Examples of warfare described in " The Art of War " which did not occur until the Warring States period include : Because the conditions and tactics advocated in " The Art of War " are historically anachronistic to the historical Sun Tzu ' s time , it is possible that " The Art of War " was created in the mid - to - late Warring States period . A view that mediates between the traditionalist interpretation that the historical Sun Tzu was the only creator of " The Art of War " in the Spring and Autumn Period and the opposite view , that " The Art of War " was created in the mid - late Warring States period centuries after Sun Tzu ' s death , suggests that the core of the text was created by Sun Tzu and underwent a period of revision before achieving roughly its current form within a century of Sun Tzu ' s death ( in the last half of the fifth - century BC ) . It seems likely that the historical figure ( of Sun Tzu ) existed , and that he not only served as a strategist and possibly a general , but also composed the core of the book that bears his name . Thereafter , the essential teachings were probably transmitted within the family or a close - knit school of disciples , being improved and revised with the passing decades while gradually gaining wider dissemination . The view that " The Art of War " achieved roughly its current form by the late fifth - century BC is supported by the recovery of the oldest existing fragments of " The Art of War " and by the analysis of the prose of " The Art of War " , which is similar to other texts dated more definitively to the late fifth - century BC ( i . e . " Mozi " ) , but dissimilar either to earlier ( i . e . " The Analects " ) or later ( i . e . " Xunzi " ) literature from roughly the same period . This theory accounts both for the historical record attributing " The Art of War " to Sun Tzu and for the description of tactics anachronistic to Sun Tzu ' s time within " The Art of War " . Not all combat elements in " The Art of War " are anachronisms . One major missing element from " The Art of War " is the army ' s use of cavalry which was generally employed by 307 BC in China , during the Warring States period but a century after the Spring and Autumn period , thereby validating the traditionalist theory . Historical annotations . Before the bamboo scroll version was discovered by archaeologists in April 1972 , a commonly cited version of " The Art of War " was the " Annotation of Sun Tzu ' s Strategies " by Cao Cao , the founder of the Kingdom of Wei . In the preface , he wrote that previous annotations were not focused on the essential ideas . After the movable type printer was invented , " The Art of War " ( with Cao Cao ' s annotations ) was published in a military textbook along with six other strategy books , collectively known as the Seven Military Classics ( 武經七書 / 武经七书 ) . As required reading in military textbooks since the Song Dynasty , more than 30 differently annotated versions of these books exist today . The " Book of Sui " documented seven books named after Sun Tzu . An annotation by Du Mu also includes Cao Cao ' s annotation . Li Jing ' s " The Art of War " is said to be a revision of Master Sun ' s strategies . Annotations by Cao Cao , Du Mu and Li Quan were translated into the Tangut language before year 1040 . Other annotations cited in official history books include Shen You ' s ( 176 - 204 ) " Sun Tzu ' s Military Strategy " , Jia Xu ' s " Copy of Sun Tzu ' s Military Strategy " , and Cao Cao and Wang Ling ' s " Sun Tzu ' s Military Strategy " . Quotations . Chinese . Verses from the book occur in modern daily Chinese idiom s and phrases , such as the last verse of Chapter 3 : 故曰 ： 知彼知己 ， 百戰不殆 ； 不知彼而知己 ， 一勝一負 ； 不知彼 ， 不知己 ， 每戰必殆 。 So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself , you can win a hundred battles without a single loss . If you only know yourself , but not your opponent , you may win or may lose . If you know neither yourself nor your enemy , you will always endanger yourself . This has been more tersely interpreted and condensed into the Chinese modern proverb : 知己知彼 ， 百戰不殆 。 ( Zhī jǐ zhī bǐ , bǎi zhàn bù dài . ) If you know both yourself and your enemy , you can win numerous ( literally , " a hundred " ) battles without jeopardy . English . Common examples can also be found in English use , such as verse 18 in Chapter 1 : 兵者 ， 詭道也 。 故能而示之不能 ， 用而示之不用 ， 近而示之遠 ， 遠而示之近 All warfare is based on deception . Hence , when we are able to attack , we must seem unable ; when using our forces , we must appear inactive ; when we are near , we must make the enemy believe we are far away ; when far away , we must make him believe we are near . This has been abbreviated to its most basic form and condensed into the English modern proverb : All warfare is based on deception . Military and intelligence applications . In many East Asian countries , " The Art of War " was part of the syllabus for potential candidates of military service examinations . Various translations are available . During the Sengoku era in Japan , a daimyo named Takeda Shingen ( 1521 – 1573 ) is said to have become almost invincible in all battles without relying on gun s , because he studied " The Art of War " . The book even gave him the inspiration for his famous battle standard " Fūrinkazan " ( Wind , Forest , Fire and Mountain ) , meaning fast as the wind , silent as a forest , ferocious as fire and immovable as a mountain . The translator Samuel B . Griffith offers a chapter on " Sun Tzu and Mao Tse - Tung " where " The Art of War " is cited as influencing Mao ' s " On Guerrilla Warfare " , " On the Protracted War " and " Strategic Problems of China ' s Revolutionary War " , and includes Mao ' s quote : " We must not belittle the saying in the book of Sun Wu Tzu , the great military expert of ancient China , ' Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a thousand battles without disaster . ' " During the Vietnam War , some Vietcong officers studied " The Art of War " and reportedly could recite entire passages from memory . General Vo Nguyen Giap successfully implemented tactics described in " The Art of War " during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu ending major French involvement in Indochina and leading to the accords which partitioned Vietnam into North and South . General Vo , later the main PVA military commander in the Vietnam War , was an avid student and practitioner of Sun Tzu ’ s ideas . America ' s defeat there , more than any other event , brought Sun Tzu to the attention of leaders of American military theory . Finnish Field Marshal Mannerheim and general Aksel Airo were avid readers of " Art of War " . They both read it in French ; Airo kept the French translation of the book on his bedside table in his quarters . The Department of the Army in the United States , through its Command and General Staff College , lists " The Art of War " as one example of a book that may be kept at a military unit ' s library . " The Art of War " is listed on the Marine Corps Professional Reading Program ( formerly known as the Commandant ' s Reading List ) . It is recommended reading for all United States Military Intelligence personnel and is required reading for all CIA officers . According to some authors , the strategy of deception from " The Art of War " was studied and widely used by the KGB : " " I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness , and our weakness for strength , and thus will turn his strength into weakness " " . The book is widely cited by KGB officers in charge of disinformation operations in Vladimir Volkoff ' s novel " Le Montage Application outside the military . " The Art of War " has been applied to many fields well outside of the military . Much of the text is about how to fight wars without actually having to do battle : it gives tips on how to outsmart one ' s opponent so that physical battle is not necessary . As such , it has found application as a training guide for many competitive endeavors that do not involve actual combat . There are business books applying its lessons to office politics and corporate strategy . Many Japan ese companies make the book required reading for their key executives . The book is also popular among Western business management , who have turned to it for inspiration and advice on how to succeed in competitive business situations . It has also been applied to the field of education . " The Art of War " has been the subject of law books and legal articles on the trial process , including negotiation tactics and trial strategy . " The Art of War " has also been applied in the world of sports . NFL coach Bill Belichick is known to have read the book and used its lessons to gain insights in preparing for games . Australian cricket as well as Brazilian association football coaches Luis Felipe Scolari and Carlos Alberto Parreira are known to have embraced the text . Scolari made the Brazilian World Cup squad of 2002 study the ancient work during their successful campaign .