Greatest chess quote ever


He was also a big Tal admirer, it seems.
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

Regarding that first quote - I prefer another one by the late GM Vladimir Liberzon (the first GM we ever had in Israel) -
A player who plays strategically but with no command of tactics is like his general whose soldiers don't know how to shoot!

Somehow I feel like the greatest chess quote [of all time] should be related to chess...
Right, better not get chess mixed up with strategy and tactics...

I think it was Steinitz who said, "The winner of a chess game is the one who makes the next to the last mistake."

Those are two words that people like to throw around far too often with regard to chess... In this case we have you very much doing that and Sun Tzu very much not doing that.
Your quote of Sun Tzu has no relation to chess. The following are not the only reasons why:
He clearly didn't have the game of chess in mind when he wrote and/or said the above.
The above doesn't apply to chess because, but not limited to, the fact that playing chess without the use of tactics is either impossible or doomed to fail, depending upon whom you ask. Either way, hardly a path to victory of any kind.

You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one