These exact words appear on quote sites but in no published translation of ‘The Art of War.’ They collapse — and reverse — Sun Tzu’s real line (III.18), which requires knowing the enemy too and promises only that you ‘need not fear’ a hundred battles; knowing yourself alone, he wrote, means ‘for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.’
“Know yourself and you will win all battles” Not a genuine Sun Tzu quote. "Know yourself and you will win all battles" is an unsourced paraphrase found on quote sites but in no translation of The Art of War. Sun Tzu's real line (III.18, Giles 1910) is "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles" — and he warned that knowing yourself alone means "for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat."
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? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
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In context
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Provenance
The genuine passage it was cut from
Work
The Art of War
Passage
Chapter III, verse 18 (“Attack by Stratagem”)
Translation
Lionel Giles, 1910
Original
“知彼知己，百戰不殆” (c. 5th c. BCE)
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
↑ the popular version keeps only ‘know yourself’ and swaps ‘need not fear a hundred battles’ for ‘win all battles’
Note what the rewrite loses: Sun Tzu makes knowing the enemy essential, and the line about knowing yourself alone predicts a win-one, lose-one record — not total victory.
The verbatim line “Know yourself and you will win all battles” is attributed to Sun Tzu on Goodreads’ quote database ↗ but carries no source.
The genuine text in Giles’ III.18 ↗ reads “know the enemy and know yourself… a hundred battles,” not “win all battles.”
Wikiquote ↗ gives the Chinese original (知彼知己，百戰不殆) and its faithful renderings — none matches the shortened slogan.
A fact-check of related variants ↗ shows how these paraphrases wrongly turn Sun Tzu’s conditional advice into a guarantee of victory.
The 5th-century-BCE original and the Giles 1910 translation are public domain. The garbled slogan “Know yourself and you will win all battles” has no identifiable author or rights holder — it is an anonymous online rewrite.
Fact-check
Why this wording is wrong
The line is credited to Sun Tzu everywhere, but the words are not his — and they change his meaning.
✕
Incorrectly attributed to Sun Tzu (as an exact quote)
No published translation of The Art of War contains “Know yourself and you will win all battles.” The nearest text, Giles III.18 ↗, says “know the enemy and know yourself… a hundred battles” — and adds that knowing yourself alone means “for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”
✕
Circulated by quote aggregators unsourced
Sites such as Goodreads ↗ and Quotefancy display the short form with a bare “Sun Tzu” tag and no chapter, translator, or edition — the signature of a paraphrase that hardened into a ‘quote.’
✓Sun Tzu’s real teaching (III.18 ↗) is that you must know both the enemy and yourself, and even then he promises only that you “need not fear” a hundred battles — never that you will win them all.
Context
The idea is real; the sentence is not
Sun Tzu’s original insight — that victory rests on mutual knowledge of self and adversary — is one of the most influential lines in military thought. The popular rewrite keeps the ‘know yourself’ half because it flatters a self-improvement reading, but in doing so it drops the enemy and inflates a hedge (‘need not fear’) into a promise (‘win all’).
That inversion matters: Sun Tzu explicitly rated self-knowledge without knowledge of the enemy as a coin-flip — “for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” The slogan claims exactly what the primary text denies.
Know yourself alone, Sun Tzu warned, and you win one and lose one — not ‘all battles.’
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
trad. c. 544 – c. 496 BCE · Chinese general & military strategist
Sun Tzu (Sunzi) is the traditional author of The Art of War, a Chinese military treatise from roughly the 5th century BCE. His actual maxim on knowledge and battle — “know the enemy and know yourself” — insists on understanding both sides; the popular one-sided rewrite drops the enemy and overstates the payoff. Sun Tzu’s very historicity is debated by scholars, which makes any word-for-word attribution to him rest ultimately on later translations rather than a verifiable original voice.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary text
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Lionel Giles (London: Luzac & Co., 1910), III.18 (“Attack by Stratagem”): “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” The shortened form “Know yourself and you will win all battles” appears in no translation.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Know yourself and you will win all battles’?” Last verified 7 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/know-yourself-and-you-will-win-all-battles