Hence a commander who advances without any thought of winning personal fame and withdraws in spite of certain punishment, whose only concern is to protect his people and promote the interests of his ruler, is the nation's treasure. Because he fusses over his men as if they were infants, they will accompany him into the deepest valleys; because he fusses over his men as if they were his own beloved sons, they will die by his side. If he is generous with them and yet they do not do as he tells them, if he loves them and yet they do not obey his commands, if he is so undisciplined with them that he cannot bring them into proper order, the will be like spoiled children who can be put to no good use at all.

The finding of Sun Bin's work is considered to be extremely important both because of Sun Bin's relationship to Sun Tzu and because of the work's addition to the body of military thought in late Chinese antiquity. Traditionalists attribute the authorship of The Art of War to the historical figure Sun Wu who is chronicled in the Records of the Grand Historian and the Spring and Autumn Annals. In 1972 scholars uncovered a collection of ancient texts written on unusually well-preserved bamboo slips.

His work continues to influence both Asian and Western culture and politics. Traditional accounts state that his descendant Sun Bin also wrote a treatise on military tactics titled Sun Bin's Art of War. Both Sun Wu and Sun Bin were referred to as Sun Tzu in classical Chinese writings and some historians believed that Sun Wu was in fact Sun Bin until Sun Bin's own treatise was discovered in 1972.