404·Quotes

404 Quotes / Exhibits / Sun Tzu

On display — unsourced

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
Label

Attributed to Sun Tzu

Nearest text: The Art of War IV.1–2 and V.16

Unsourced Not found in The Art of War in Lionel Giles's 1910 translation. Its nearest passages say something different.

Did Sun Tzu say “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity”? Not in The Art of War as translated in 1910

Not in these words. The sentence does not appear in Lionel Giles's 1910 English translation of The Art of War, the standard public-domain version. The book does talk about chaos and about opportunity, but in separate passages that say something different, and no earlier source for the English line has been found.

What it means

Disorder is not only a threat: when everything is unsettled, there are openings that calm conditions do not offer. As a motivational line it is usually aimed at business or personal setbacks.

Where it comes from

The nearest passage on chaos is in chapter V, “Energy”, verse 16: “Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat.” That is a point about a well-drilled army looking disordered without being so, not about chaos creating chances.

The nearest passage on opportunity is in chapter IV, “Tactical Dispositions”, verses 1 and 2: the good fighters of old first made themselves safe from defeat “and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy”, because “the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.” In Sun Tzu the opportunity comes from the other side's mistake, not from chaos as such. Neither Wikiquote's page for Sun Tzu nor our search of the Giles text turns up the popular sentence, and we have not found where it first appeared.

Other versions you will see

  • “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
    The usual wording, on posters and in business books
  • “Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all.”
    What chapter V actually says, in Lionel Giles's 1910 translation

Provenance

  1. Primary textSun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Lionel Giles (1910): chapters IV and V — Project Gutenberg eBook #132
  2. ReferenceSun Tzu (sourced quotations, and lines not found in any print translation) — Wikiquote

Last reviewed 6 October 2026

Questions

Did Sun Tzu say “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity”?

It is not in The Art of War as Lionel Giles translated it in 1910. The nearest passages are about seeming disorder in battle (V.16) and waiting for the enemy to provide an opportunity (IV.1–2).

What does Sun Tzu say about chaos?

That a well-organised army can look disordered in the confusion of battle and still be “proof against defeat” (chapter V, verse 16, in Giles's translation).

What does “in the midst of chaos there is also opportunity” mean?

That times of disorder also open up chances that calm conditions do not, so confusion is worth watching rather than only fearing.

Where this one hangs

It belongs in the Beginnings room, with the other checked lines on the same subject.

Nearby exhibits