Du Mu famous quotes

Too much emotion is like none at all.
-- Du Mu

#Emotional #Too Much #Emotion

If you wish to feign confusion in order to lure the enemy on, you must first have perfect discipline; if you wish to display timidity in order to entrap the enemy, you must have extreme courage; if you wish to parade your weakness in order to make the enemy over-confident, you must have exceeding strength.
-- Du Mu

#Military #Order #Discipline

Humaneness and justice are the means by which to govern properly. When government is carried out properly, people feel close to the leadership and think little of dying for it.
-- Du Mu

#Mean #Thinking #Government

If I wish to wrest an advantage from the enemy, I must not fix my mind on that alone, but allow for the possibility of the enemy also doing some harm to me... If I wish to extricate myself from a dangerous position, I must consider not only the enemy's ability to injure me, but also my own ability to gain an advantage over the enemy.
-- Du Mu

#Military #Mind #Enemy

If the enemy is the invading party, we can cut his line of communications and occupy the roads by which he will have to return; if we are the invaders, we may direct our attack against the sovereign himself.
-- Du Mu

#Military #Communication #Party

Roll rocks down a ten-thousand-foot mountain, and they cannot be stopped - this is because of the mountain, not the rocks. Get people to fight with the courage to win every time, and the strong and the weak unite - this is because of the momentum, not the individuals.
-- Du Mu

#Strong #Fighting #Winning

In general, fire is used to throw enemies into confusion so that you can attack them.
-- Du Mu

#Fire #Confusion #Enemy

I think fiction can help us find everything. You know, I think that in fiction you can say things and in a way be truer than you can be in real life and truer than you can be in non-fiction. There's an accuracy to fiction that people don't really talk about - an emotional accuracy.

No matter what's happening in the Middle East - the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment - the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.

Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith.

Relief is a wonderful emotion, highly underrated. In fact, I prefer it to elation or joy. Relief lets the air out of the Tire of Pain.

The best we can do, to paraphrase Pollan, is to eat whole foods, mostly plants, and not too much.

I don't like being out in public too much. I don't like going to bars. I don't like doing celebrity stuff.

Sometimes we read or hear too much news that makes us fearful or suspicious of others. We can forget that most of the people that we know, or at least encounter regularly, are decent and friendly.

For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

...mastery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life.

I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.