Mao played down material factors, such as economic and military power, in which he was evidently deficient, in favor of human power and morale: “It is people, not things that are decisive.”15 Given the armed struggle in which he had been engaged for over a decade, it was not surprising that he insisted in another famous aphorism that “power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” reflecting the twists and turns of the armed struggle that had shaped his life. Mao had read Clausewitz and Lawrence.16 John Shy judged him to be in some respects closer to Jomini, with “similar maxims, repetitions, and
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