Chinese Philosopher Quotes

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy. ~ Lao-Tzu

There is a certain proper and luxurious way of lying in bed. Confucius, that great artist of life, "never lay straight" in bed, "like a corpse", but always curled up on one side. I believe one of the greatest pleasures of life is to curl up one's legs in bed. The posture of the arms is also very important, in order to reach the greatest degree of aesthetic pleasure and mental power. I believe the best posture is not lying flat on the bed, but being upholstered with big soft pillows at an angle of thirty degrees with either one arm or both arms placed behind the back of one's head. ~ Lin Yutang

If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it. ~ Lin Yutang

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort. ~ Confucius

But the truth is that I don't want to simply offer others a fleeting moment of "inspiration." I want my story to spark real change. An aha moment becomes most meaningful when it leads us to do more. Dream bigger. Move past our so-called limitations. Defy expectations. Bounce back with the resilience that every single one of us was born with. I didn't write this book because I want you to say, "Wow, look at what that girl overcame - good for her." I'm sharing my story because I want you to see what's possible in your own life. Right here. Right now. Starting the second you pick up your pen and create your own amazing narrative. The words of the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu have always resonated with me: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." What follows is my first step. My first stumble. My first dance. My first dream. ~ Amy Purdy

Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are ... condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; his two-fold security. ~ Tom Stoppard

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know. ~ Lao-Tzu

The Chinese philosopher Mencius believed that man is innately good. He argued that anyone who saw a child falling into a well would immediately feel shock and alarm, and that this impulse, this universal capacity for commiseration, was proof positive that man is inherently good. ~ T. Greenwood

Laozi was an ancient Chinese philosopher. According to Chinese tradition, Laozi lived in the 6th century BC, however many historians contend that Laozi ~ Lao-Tzu

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it. ~ Lao-Tzu

soldiers on the banks of the canal, they looked carefully to see whether they were Japanese or Chinese so they'd know which pass to pull out. ~ Katherine Paterson

Mulan is so important in Chinese folklore - a fearless girl who cared about her family and country so much that she was willing to join the fight and sacrifice herself. ~ Ming-Na Wen

I think I'd like a short, direct answer to every question,' I replied, laughing. He raised an eyebrow at the foolishness of my flippant response and then shook his head slowly. 'Do you know the English philosopher Bertrand Russell? Have you read any of his books?' 'Yeah. I read some of his stuff - at university, and in prison.' 'He was a favourite of my dear Mr. Mackenzie Esquire,' Khader smiled. 'I do not often agree with Bertrand Russell's conclusions, but I do like the way he arrives at them. Anyway, he once said, Anything that can be put in a nutshell should remain there. And I do agree with him about that. ~ Gregory David Roberts

Where truth rises ignorance falls. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The Chinese view the state, not just as an intimate member of the family ... but as the head of the family. ~ Martin Jacques

Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way. ~ William James

The visible world was only an imperfect reflection of the Ideal, which the Philosopher sought to transcend. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. ~ Charles Darwin

Alvin Plantinga is arguably the greatest philosopher of the last century. ~ Alvin Plantinga

Be modest in speech, but excel in action. ~ Horace

The philosopher, who with calm suspicion examines the dreams and omens, the miracles and prodigies, of profane or even of ecclesiastical history, will probably conclude that, if the eyes of the spectators have sometimes been deceived by fraud, the understanding of the readers has much more frequently been insulted by fiction. ~ Edward Gibbon

I'm as proud to be Chinese as I am American. ~ Ming-Na Wen

No one like crying, but tears water our souls. So, perhaps my thanks should be to allow you to cry for the Chinese women in my books ... ~ Xinran

And yet Xiao Li always spoke of her mother as if her image were mounted in a red-and-gold picture frame resting on a shrine in the corner of a tidy house, to be venerated and pleased at all times, like a deceased ancestor ever-present and scrutinizing her progeny. ~ Victor Robert Lee

When judging modernity, it is all too tempting to take the viewpoint of a twenty-first-century middle-class Westerner. We must not forget the viewpoints of a nineteenth-century Welsh coal miner, Chinese opium addict or Tasmanian Aborigine. Truganini is no less important than Homer Simpson. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

You're of a mind with Mr. Staines.'
'Am I?'
'Yes,' Anna said. 'That is precisely the sort of thing that he would say.'
'Your Mr. Staines is quite the philosopher, Miss Wetherell.'
'Why, Reverend,' Anna said, smiling suddenly, 'I believe you've just paid yourself a compliment. ~ Eleanor Catton

There are around 100 million people in China who are not Han. They belong instead to fifty-five officially recognised ethnic minorities scattered mainly across the borderlands: a vast area that takes up almost two-thirds of the country, much of which was absorbed into China relatively recently. There are another 400 or so groups with fewer than the 5,000 people needed for them to be acknowledged formally as minorities by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). ~ David Eimer

I write - poignantly, in the most heartfelt way - about how I miss her and how I detest my life in this school and she responds with detailed plans for her future life as an archaeologist or philosopher or - new, this - a veterinary surgeon. ~ William Boyd

The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery, on the other hand, is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pierglass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, the candle is the egoism of any party now absent. ~ George Eliot

The trouble with you," Parvathi said with a wisdom beyond her years, "Is that you don't know who you want to be. Girl or boy. Chinese or Malay."

"Ya-lah you!" Fatima said. "No wonder the kids in your school call you OCBC."

There was a bank in Singapore called the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation, or OCBC in short. So some cruel kid in school played on the initials of the bank to make fun of Peranakans.

They jeered, "Orang Cina Bukan Cina." The words translated as Chinese person, not Chinese. ~ Josephine Chia

Whoever is so stupid as to imagine God to be either masculine or feminine openly shows that he is as bad a philosopher as a theologian. ~ Marie De Gournay

We are taking the time to consider the Hungarian case for a simple reason: to show that constitutional limits on a central government's power do not by themselves necessarily produce political accountability. The "freedom" sought by the Hungarian noble class was the freedom to exploit their own peasants more thoroughly, and the absence of a strong central state allowed them to do just that. Everyone understands the Chinese form of tyranny, one perpetrated by a centralized dictatorship. But tyranny can result from decentralized oligarchic domination as well. True freedom tends to emerge in the interstices of a balance of power among a society's elite actors, something that Hungary never succeeded in achieving. ~ Francis Fukuyama

Another much-discussed question is, whether women are intended by nature to be subject to men."No," said a very gallant philosopher to me the other day; "nature never dictated any such law.The dominion which we exercise over them is tyrannical; they yield themselves to men only because they are more tender-hearted, and consequently more human and more rational.These advantages, which, had we been reasonable, would, without doubt, have been the cause of their subordination, because we are irrational.

"Now, if it is true that it is a tyrannical power which we have over women, it is none the less true that they exercise over us a natural dominion- that of beauty, which nothing can resist.Our power does not extend to all countries, but that of beauty is universal.Why, then, should we have any privilege?Is it because we are stronger than they?But that would be the height of injustice.We use every possible means to discourage them.Our powers would be found equal if we were educated alike.Try women in those gifts which education has not weakened, and we soon will see which is the abler sex. ~ Montesquieu

We are living in the world of pandemic.
Life is not the same as it was before.
We have to choose new ways of living.
Being ignorance or in denial won't make you immune to the virus.
Choose to be responsible and always be careful. Watch what you do, where you go and what you touch. You can practice your freedom by choosing to be safe. ~ De Philosopher DJ Kyos

When I think of Chinese parents, I think of people who weep upon hearing Beethoven, but who can't necessarily bring that joy to others. ~ Sandra Tsing Loh

A little fragrance always clings to the hand that gives the roses. ~ Chinese Proverb

A turbulent history has taught Chinese leaders that not every problem has a solution and that too great an emphasis on total mastery over specific events could upset the harmony of the universe. ~ Henry Kissinger

Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. ~ Robert Graves

The 7 Secrets of Happiness

1. Think positively.
2. Do work you love.
3. Avoid anger.
4. Give generously.
5. Be grateful.
6. Overcome negativity.
7. Develop thick skin. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

In Hitler the rare union has taken place between the most acute logical thinker and truly profound philosopher, and the iron man of action ... I follow no leadership but that of Adolf Hitler and of God. ~ Hermann Goring

Let us confess a truth, humiliating to human pride; - a very small part only of the opinions of the coolest philosopher are the result of fair reasoning; the rest are formed by his education, his temperament, by the age in which he lives, by trains of thought directed to a particular track through some accidental association - in short, by prejudice. ~ Anna Letitia Barbauld

Aristotle suggests that the rotating Earth was a generally accepted tenet of Pythagorism: "While most of those who hold that the whole heaven is finite say that the earth lies at the center, the philosophers of Italy, the so-called Pythagoreans, assert the contrary. They say that in the middle there is fire, and that the earth is one of the stars, and by its circular motion round the center produces night and day." ~ Aristotle.

To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer. ~ George Bernard Shaw

When Chinese get together - what's buried stays buried. We don't even discuss our embarrassing early days struggling in Chicago. ~ Anchee Min

I have often noticed that nationalism is at its strongest at the periphery. Hitler was Austrian, Bonaparte Corsican. In postwar Greece and Turkey the two most prominent ultra-right nationalists had both been born in Cyprus. The most extreme Irish Republicans are in Belfast and Derry (and Boston and New York). Sun Yat Sen, father of Chinese nationalism, was from Hong Kong. The Serbian extremists Miloševic and Karadžic were from Montenegro and their most incendiary Croat counterparts in the Ustashe tended to hail from the frontier lands of Western Herzegovina. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Sharks to not eat Chinese people because they get hungry thirty minutes later. ~ R. Alan Woods

Albanian dogs go "ham ham." In Catalan, dogs go "bup bup." The Chinese dogs say "wang wang," the Greek dogs go "gav gav," the Slovenians "hov hov," and the Ukrainians "haf haf." In Iceland, it's "voff," in Indonesia, it's "gong gong," and in Italian, it's "bau bau. ~ John Lloyd

That's life" said the philosopher each time he was almost laid prostrate, "It's often our best friends who make us fall ~ Victor Hugo

It is difficult for my fellow countrymen who have never lived abroad to understand that until a foreign man is about sixty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he'd like to punch an American in the face. Even people like the Chinese, who mostly like us, think of us
at least partly
as loud, fat, poorly dressed, overprivileged, hectoring, naive, arrogant, self-righteous bullies with little knowledge and no interest in any culture other than our own. I once had a conversation with a Japanese journalist who said to me, "You don't seem like an American." When I asked him, slightly hurt, why he said that, he replied, "Because you listen. ~ Matthew Polly

Leftist university professors in Western Europe and the United States have also been agitated about one other country's wars - Israel's. Hence the numerous attempts by Leftist professors at Western universities to boycott Israeli professors and universities. But, of course, Chinese professors and universities are not only exempt from boycotts; they are enthusiastically sought after despite the lack of elementary freedoms in China, the Chinese government's incarceration of dissidents in psychiatric wards, the decimation of much of Tibetan culture, and the increasing Chinese occupation of that ancient country. ~ Dennis Prager

If you think you are the philosopher then I am the philosophy. ~ Amit Abraham

An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet. ~ Bertrand Russell

Fortune cookies are an American invention, and we gave it to them. The Chinese were probably like, "Uh, we don't want it." And we were like, "It's now part of your ethnic identity. ~ Jim Gaffigan

Of real sensational journalism, as it exists in France, in Ireland, and in America, we have no trace in this country. When a journalist in Ireland wishes to create a thrill, he creates a thrill worth talking about. He denounces a leading Irish member for corruption, or he charges the whole police system with a wicked and definite conspiracy. When a French journalist desires a frisson there is a frisson; he discovers, let us say, that the President of the Republic has murdered three wives. Our yellow journalists invent quite as unscrupulously as this; their moral condition is, as regards careful veracity, about the same. But it is their mental calibre which happens to be such that they can only invent calm and even reassuring things. The fictitious version of the massacre of the envoys of Pekin was mendacious, but it was not interesting, except to those who had private reasons for terror or sorrow. It was not connected with any bold and suggestive view of the Chinese situation. It revealed only a vague idea that nothing could be impressive except a great deal of blood. Real sensationalism, of which
I happen to be very fond, may be either moral or immoral. But even when it is most immoral, it requires moral courage. For it is one of the most dangerous things on earth genuinely to surprise anybody. If you make any sentient creature jump, you render it by no means improbable that it will jump on you. But the leaders of this movement have no moral courage or immoral courage; ~ G.K. Chesterton

At some point the Japanese, Chinese and Saudi buyers of US and European Government bonds will see just what miserable value they offer. Then governments may have to stop all the runaway spending and bailouts and even put up interest rates. ~ Luke Johnson

The philosopher and psychologist Riccardo Manzotti describes the process of reading and rereading as creating both locks and keys with which to open them; it shows you an area of life you didn't even know was there and, almost simultaneously, starts to give you the tools with which to decipher it. ~ Lucy Mangan

Every year when it's Chinese New Year here in New York, there are fireworks going off at all hours. New York mothers calm their frightened children by telling them it's just gunfire. ~ David Letterman