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Who really said it

Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy

Not Sun Tzu — a 1987 Star Trek line Herbert Wright 1946–2005 · Star Trek: The Next Generation writer and co-producer
Disputed In copyright

The line was written for Commander William Riker in “The Last Outpost,” the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that first aired 19 October 1987, from a teleplay credited to Herbert Wright. It appears in no translation of The Art of War, and no known source for the wording predates the broadcast — though, as with any television teleplay, the credited writer may not be the only hand on a given line.

Last verified 14 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy” Cmdr. William Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Last Outpost" (1987); teleplay by Herbert Wright. Not Sun Tzu — the line appears in no translation of The Art of War, and no source for it predates the 1987 broadcast.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Sun Tzu. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Paramount (Star Trek: The Next Generation was produced by Paramount Domestic Television); teleplay credited to Herbert Wright). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Herbert Wright — Television writer and producer · "Father of the Ferengi". Theme: "Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy". 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.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

Work
Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Last Outpost” (season 1, episode 5)
First aired
19 October 1987
Written by
Teleplay by Herbert Wright; story by Richard Krzemien; directed by Richard Colla
Spoken by
Cmdr. William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) — a fictional character, answering a challenge

Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy. Riker’s answer to the Portal

The surrounding dialogue is paraphrased here rather than reproduced, as the 1987 teleplay remains in copyright. In the scene, the Portal — the guardian of the long-dead Tkon Empire — halts a weapon a hair from Riker’s head and demands the answer to its challenge. Riker gives the line above. Crucially, he offers it as his own answer, not as a quotation from anyone. Only afterwards does the Portal read a different thought from his mind — a loose paraphrase of Sun Tzu on knowing the enemy and knowing yourself — and ask who this Sun Tzu he reveres might be. The two lines are seconds apart, and that proximity is what fused them.

Production teleplay
Read the 8/7/87 shooting script
Wikiquote: Sun Tzu, “Misattributed”

How we verified this

  • It is not in Sun Tzu. A full-text search of Lionel Giles’s 1910 translation of The Art of War ↗ — text and commentary together — returns zero hits for “true enemy” or “only enemy.”
  • Earliest documented appearance: the shooting script dated 8/7/87 ↗, where the line is Riker’s own reply to the Portal’s challenge — presented as his answer, not as a citation of anybody.
  • The episode first aired 19 October 1987 ↗; the Wikipedia article quotes the line directly and credits the teleplay to Herbert Wright, from a story by Richard Krzemien.
  • Wikiquote files it under “Misattributed” ↗, noting it was “attributed implicitly to Sun Tzu” by Riker and that no source for the quote predates the episode’s 1987 airing.
In copyright

This wording is not an ancient text and is not public domain. It originates in a television teleplay first broadcast in 1987 — far later than the 1931 US public-domain cutoff — so it remains in copyright, held by the Star Trek: The Next Generation ↗ rights holder. Note the trap: Sun Tzu’s actual text is millennia old and Giles’s 1910 translation is public domain, so people assume anything wearing Sun Tzu’s name is free to use. Because this line is not his, that inference fails — the Sun Tzu label launders a 1987 in-copyright line into an apparently ancient one.

Fact-check

How a Starfleet officer became a Chinese general

This is an unusually clean case: the quote did not drift from a real source, it was born in a scene that also happened to name-drop Sun Tzu twice. The episode does the misattributing all by itself.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War Fabricated

No translation of The Art of War contains this line. Searching the full text of Lionel Giles’s 1910 translation on Project Gutenberg ↗ — including Giles’s extensive commentary and the classical Chinese commentators he quotes — produces no instance of the phrase “true enemy” or “only enemy” anywhere.

Cmdr. William Riker, 1987 Origin

Wikiquote ↗ records it as “attributed implicitly to Sun Tzu” by Riker in “The Last Outpost,” and states plainly that “no source for this quote predates the episode’s airing in 1987.”

The scene itself Why it stuck

In the shooting script ↗, Riker gives the fear line as his own answer — then, seconds later, the Portal recites a Sun Tzu paraphrase from his mind and asks who Sun Tzu is. Earlier in the same episode Riker quotes a real Sun Tzu line and Picard remarks that the Academy still teaches Sun Tzu’s strategy. Three Sun Tzu cues surround one invented sentence; viewers understandably filed all four together.

Sun Tzu (the genuine article) The real thing

The thought the Portal actually pulls from Riker’s mind is a loose rendering of Giles III.18: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles” — verifiable in the Giles text ↗. Note that the real Sun Tzu treats fear as something dissolved by knowledge, not as an enemy to be named and fought. The fear line is not merely unsourced; it is a different idea.

Sun Tzu did not write it, and neither did any of his translators. The wording is Riker’s, invented for a 1987 teleplay — and no source for it predates that broadcast ↗.

Context

Two real Sun Tzu lines, one invention, one scene

“The Last Outpost” is best remembered as the episode that introduced the Ferengi. Its quieter legacy is a fake Sun Tzu quotation that has outlived the plot entirely. The episode is genuinely steeped in Sun Tzu: early on, Picard tells Riker that sometimes the best way to win a fight is not to be there, and Riker answers with a close paraphrase of Giles III.17 — “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight” — prompting Picard to note approvingly that Starfleet Academy still teaches Sun Tzu.

So when the Portal, at the climax, halts a blade beside Riker’s head and demands an answer, and Riker replies that fear is the true enemy, the audience has already been primed. The Portal then reaches into his mind, recites a second real Sun Tzu paraphrase, and asks who Sun Tzu is. The invented line sits in the middle of a Sun Tzu sandwich. Nothing in the scene says Sun Tzu wrote it — and nothing says he didn’t.

Two genuine Sun Tzu paraphrases, one invented sentence between them, and forty years of quote sites unable to tell which was which.

A footnote on the writer, and why the line sounds so plausible

There is a real irony in the credit. The teleplay is credited to Herbert Wright, who — per his Wikipedia biography ↗ — studied in Japan as an exchange student, met Akira Kurosawa, took up a lifelong study of martial arts and held a black belt in Japanese sword. A writer with genuine grounding in East Asian martial tradition wrote the Sun Tzu episode; the line most often credited to Sun Tzu because of it is the one he made up. (The connection between Wright’s background and this particular line is our own observation, not a claim made by that source.)

One honest caveat on authorship: television teleplays are collaborative, and first-season Star Trek: The Next Generation scripts were heavily rewritten in the producers’ room. The line is present in the 8/7/87 script under Wright’s teleplay credit, which is the strongest documentary claim available — but we cannot prove which hand typed that specific sentence, and we do not assert it.

Why does the fake outperform the real thing? Because it is shorter and more quotable. Sun Tzu’s actual maxims are conditional and procedural — if you know X then Y follows. “Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy” is an aphorism: absolute, symmetrical, and repeatable. It is written the way modern audiences expect ancient wisdom to sound, which is precisely why it does not sound like Sun Tzu once you have read him.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Courage Doubt

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Sun Tzu (Misattributed)en.wikiquote.org

The anchor source. Lists this quote under “Misattributed,” noting it was attributed implicitly to Sun Tzu by Riker and that no source predates the 1987 airing.
The Art of War, trans. Lionel Giles (1910) — full textgutenberg.org

The standard public-domain translation. Searchable in full: contains no “true enemy” or “only enemy,” but does contain the genuine III.17 and III.18 lines the episode paraphrases.
“The Last Outpost” — shooting script, 8/7/87st-minutiae.com

The primary artifact. Shows the line as Riker’s own answer to the Portal’s challenge, with the Sun Tzu reference arriving only afterwards.
The Last Outpost (Star Trek: TNG) — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Episode facts: first aired 19 October 1987, season 1 episode 5, teleplay by Herbert Wright from a story by Richard Krzemien. Quotes the line verbatim.
Herbert Wright (producer) — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the credited teleplay writer: 1946–2005, Yale 1969, “Father of the Ferengi,” and his study of martial arts and Japanese sword.
Star Trek: The Next Generation — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Series background used for the rights assessment: produced by Paramount Domestic Television, originally run 1987–1994 in first-run syndication.

The man who actually wrote it

The writer behind the line

Herbert Wright

1946–2005 · Television writer and producer · “Father of the Ferengi”

Herbert J. Wright (1946–2005) was a television writer and producer who graduated from Yale with honors in 1969 and worked on Night Gallery, Hunter, McCloud and War of the Worlds. He was a co-producer on the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and wrote the teleplay for “The Last Outpost” — the episode that introduced the Ferengi, earning him the fan title “Father of the Ferengi.” As an American Field Service exchange student he studied in Japan, met director Akira Kurosawa, and began a lifelong study of martial arts; he held a black belt in Japanese sword.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented source

Herbert Wright (teleplay) and Richard Krzemien (story), “The Last Outpost,” Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 1, episode 5, directed by Richard Colla, first aired 19 October 1987 (Paramount Domestic Television). Shooting script dated 8/7/87. Earliest documented appearance of the wording; the line is absent from Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Lionel Giles (1910).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy’?” Last verified 14 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/fear-is-the-true-enemy-the-only-enemy

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