This one is real. It is verse 18 of Chapter I (“Laying Plans”) in Lionel Giles’s 1910 translation of The Art of War, published in London by Luzac & Co., where it renders the four-character Chinese line 兵者詭道也. The famous English wording — “All warfare is based on deception” — is Giles’s, and it is his phrasing, not a later paraphrase, that the internet quotes.
“All warfare is based on deception” Sun Tzu, The Art of War, chapter 1, verse 18, translated by Lionel Giles (London: Luzac & Co., 1910). Verified at quotle.info
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Evoking the world of Sun Tzu — Chinese general, strategist and writer of the Eastern Zhou period. Theme: "All warfare is based on deception". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
The source
Work
Sun Tzŭ on the Art of War: The Oldest Military Treatise in the World
Passage
Chapter I, “Laying Plans,” verse 18
Translation
Lionel Giles, M.A. — London: Luzac & Co., 1910
Original
兵者詭道也 — the classical Chinese Giles prints beside verse 18
18. All warfare is based on deception. 19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem 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. 20. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.
Chapter I, verses 18–20
Giles adds his own bracketed note under verse 18: “The truth of this pithy and profound saying will be admitted by every soldier,” before citing Colonel Henderson on Wellington’s talent for concealing his movements.
The classical Chinese original has been in the public domain for millennia, and the exact English wording quoted here comes from Lionel Giles’s translation first published in London by Luzac & Co. in 1910 ↗ — well before the 1931 US threshold, which is why Project Gutenberg can host it in full. Note that this status attaches to Giles’s wording specifically: a modern translation of the same Chinese sentence would be a new, in-copyright work.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The company it keeps
Sun Tzu is one of the internet’s great fake-quote magnets, so scepticism is the right instinct here — it just happens to be misplaced. This line is in the book. What is worth knowing is which nearby “Sun Tzu” lines are not, and where the wording of this one drifts.
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Wording“All warfare is based upon deception” variant
A common drift of one word. Giles’s verse 18 reads “based on” ↗. Other translators render 兵者詭道也 differently again — if you are quoting a specific English wording, you are quoting a specific translator.
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Different quote“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” not Sun Tzu
Chapter I of The Art of War spends seventeen verses on sober bookkeeping — weather, terrain, discipline, whether your commander is any good — and then, in verse 18, drops the sentence that made the whole book famous. Everything that follows is a worked example: seem unable when you are able, seem idle when you are moving, look far away when you are close. Deception is not presented as a dirty trick available to the desperate. It is presented as the medium war happens in.
Giles clearly knew he had hold of the best line in the book. His note beneath it reaches straight for Wellington, quoting Colonel Henderson on the skill with which the Duke concealed his movements and deceived both friend and foe ↗ — a British general enlisted as evidence for a Chinese aphorism, which is roughly how the next century of quoting this line would go.
“The truth of this pithy and profound saying will be admitted by every soldier.” — Lionel Giles, 1910
How the line reached English
Europe met the text late and badly. The Project Gutenberg edition’s introduction records that a French Jesuit in China, Joseph Amiot, acquired a copy in 1782 and translated it into French — a version Giles dismissed as containing a great deal Sun Tzu did not write and very little of what he did. The first English translation was published in 1905 in Tokyo by Capt. E. F. Calthrop ↗, which Giles called, with no visible reluctance, “excessively bad.”
Giles’s own translation followed in 1910 with an introduction and critical notes, and it is the one that stuck: the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society noticed it in July 1910 ↗, and because the edition is long out of copyright it became the free text everyone reprints, quotes and screenshots. When you see this sentence on a motivational poster, you are reading a British Museum sinologist’s English.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Traditionally 544–496 BC · Chinese general, strategist and writer of the Eastern Zhou period
Sun Tzu is traditionally credited with The Art of War, the thirteen-chapter treatise that has outlasted every army it was written for. The Han historian Sima Qian dated his life to 544–496 BC and made him a general in the service of Wu — but his historical existence is uncertain ↗, Chinese scholars began doubting it as early as the 12th century, and the earliest parts of the text probably postdate the traditional figure by at least a century. What is not in doubt is the book: whoever assembled it, this line has sat in its opening chapter for as long as we have had the chapter.
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Cite this
Primary source
Sun Tzŭ, Sun Tzŭ on the Art of War: The Oldest Military Treatise in the World, trans. Lionel Giles (London: Luzac & Co., 1910), chap. 1, verse 18.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘All warfare is based on deception’?” Last verified 29 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/all-warfare-is-based-on-deception/