Lawrence: Seven Pillars Of Wisdom

...And how would the Turks defend all that? No doubt by a trench line across the bottom, if we came like an army with banners; but suppose we were (as we might be) an influence, an idea, a thing intangible, invulnerable, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. We might be a vapour, blowing where we listed. Our kingdoms lay in each man's mind; and as we wanted nothing material to live on, so we might offer nothing material to the killing. It seemed a regular soldier might be helpless without a target, owning only what he sat on, and subjugating only what, by order, he could poke his rifle at...

-- T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom


...In 1946, in a conversation with General Raoul Salan of France, Giap reportedly informed him, "My fighting gospel is T.E. Lawrence's 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom'. I am never without it."

... Lawrence noted ... "Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent active in a striking force and 98 per cent passively sympathetic."

-- from Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam's Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap

Maybe bookmarking Pillars and reading it over time would be a good idea.