“A commander’s correct dispositions stem from his correct decisions, his correct decisions stem from his correct judgements, and his correct judgements stem from a thorough and necessary reconnaissance and from pondering on and piecing together the data of various kinds gathered through reconnaissance. He applies all possible and necessary methods of reconnaissance, and ponders on the information gathered about the enemy’s situation, discarding the dross and selecting the essential, eliminating the false and retaining the true, proceeding from the one to the other and from the outside to the inside.”

Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong
Chapter 23—Investigation & Study, 1967
[“Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War” (December 1936),
Selected Works, Vol. I.  p. 188]