Mencius Quotes

“You can dam and direct the water, and you can force it to remain on the top of a mountain without flowing down. But is this what water's nature really is? It is what you have done to it that makes it so. Humans can also be made to be not good in the same way. "
- Mencius”
― Michael Puett, The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life

“Living in a capricious world means accepting that we do not live within a stable moral cosmos that will always reward people for what they do. We should not deny that real tragedies happen. But at the same time, we should always expect to be surprised and learn to work with whatever befalls us. If we continue this work, even when tragedies come our way, we can begin to accept the world as unpredictable and impossible to understand perfectly. And this is where the promise of a capricious world lies; if our world is indeed constantly fragmented and unpredicatable, then it is something we can constantly work on bettering. We can go into each situation resolved to be the best human being we can be, not because of what we'll get our of it, but simply to affect others around us for the better, regardless of the outcome. We can cultivate our better sides and face this unpredicatble world, transforming as we go.”
― Michael Puett, The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life

“With regard to beasts, the noble man [acts] as follows. When he sees them alive, he cannot bear to see them die. When he hears their sounds, he cannot bear to eat their flesh. Therefore the noble man keeps a distance from the kitchen.” (Mencius 1A.7)”
― Paul R. Goldin, Confucianism

“From Mencius ...

"If, however, dogs and swine eat that food which should be eaten by human beings, without thought being taken to put a stop to this practice, if people starve to death on the public highways, without thought being taken as to how to help them, and if one still says, in the face of the extinction of the population, 'It is not I who am to blame for this, but the bad year'—this is just the same as if one stabs a person to death and says, 'It is not I who did this, but the sword.”
― Richard Wilhelm, Confucius and Confucianism.