Confucius - People Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

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The people may be made to follow a path of action, but they may not be made to understand it.

Confucius
If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame.

Confucius
Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.

Confucius
The people may be put into the way they should go, though they may not be put into the way of understanding it.

Confucius
In old days men studied for the sake of self-improvement; nowadays men study in order to impress other people.

Confucius
From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.

Confucius
The good man does not grieve
that other people do not recognize his merits.
His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognize theirs.

Confucius
The noble-minded are calm and steady. Little people are forever fussing and fretting.

Confucius
Women and people of low birth are very hard to deal with. If you are friendly to them, they get out of hand, and if you keep your distance, they resent it.

Confucius
The requisites of government are that there be sufficiency of food, sufficiency of military equipment, and the confidence of the people in their ruler.

Confucius
Among the appliances to transform the people, sound and appearances are but trivial influences.

Confucius
What the great learning teaches, is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence.

Confucius
Behave when away from home as though you were in the presence of an honored guest. Employ the people as though you were assisting at an important sacrifice. Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no feelings of opposition to you, whether it is the affairs of a state that you are handling or the affairs of a family.

Confucius
No state can exist without the confidence of the people.

Confucius
A country of a thousand war-chariots cannot be administered unless the ruler attends strictly to business, punctually observes his promises, is economical in expenditure, loves the people, and uses the labor of the peasantry only at the proper times of year.

Confucius
In carrying on your government, why should you use killing [the unprincipled for the good of the unprincipled] at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good. The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows across it.

Confucius
The Master said, What a worthy man was Yan Hui! Living in a narrow alley, subsisting upon meager bits of rice and water—other people could not have borne such hardship, and yet it never spoiled Hui's joy. What a worthy man was Hui!

Confucius
If you desire what is good, the people will be good. The character of a ruler is like wind and that of the people is like grass. In whatever direction the wind blows the grass always bends.

Confucius
Go before the people with your example, and be laborious in their affairs.

Confucius