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To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
— Sun Tzu · The Art of War
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An editorial interpretation.
The passage distinguishes winning battles from the highest kind of success. Its preferred achievement is overcoming resistance without fighting at all. That reversal makes the absence of combat a sign of excellence, shifting attention from the number of victories to how opposition is resolved.
Context reviewed