“The kingdom, its states, and its families, may be perfectly ruled; dignities and emoluments may be declined; naked weapons may be trampled under the feet; but the course of the Mean cannot be attained to.”

—  Confucius

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The kingdom, its states, and its families, may be perfectly ruled; dignities and emoluments may be declined; naked weap…" by Confucius?
Confucius photo
Confucius 269
Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher -551–-479 BC

Related quotes

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“Humanity may endure the loss of everything: all its possessions may be torn away without infringing its true dignity; — all but the possibility of improvement.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

"The Vocation of the Scholar" (1794), as translated by William Smith, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889), Vol. I, Lecture IV, p. 188.
The Vocation of the Scholar (1794)

Karl Pearson photo
Hermann Rauschning photo
John Marshall photo

“No trace is to be found in the Constitution of an intention to create a dependence of the Government of the Union on those of the States, for the execution of the great powers assigned to it. Its means are adequate to its ends, and on those means alone was it expected to rely for the accomplishment of its ends. To impose on it the necessity of resorting to means which it cannot control, which another Government may furnish or withhold, would render its course precarious, the result of its measures uncertain, and create a dependence on other Governments which might disappoint its most important designs, and is incompatible with the language of the Constitution.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 424
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
Context: [.. ] it can scarcely be necessary to say that the existence of State banks can have no possible influence on the question. No trace is to be found in the Constitution of an intention to create a dependence of the Government of the Union on those of the States, for the execution of the great powers assigned to it. Its means are adequate to its ends, and on those means alone was it expected to rely for the accomplishment of its ends. To impose on it the necessity of resorting to means which it cannot control, which another Government may furnish or withhold, would render its course precarious, the result of its measures uncertain, and create a dependence on other Governments which might disappoint its most important designs, and is incompatible with the language of the Constitution. But were it otherwise, the choice of means implies a right to choose a national bank in preference to State banks, and Congress alone can make the election. After the most deliberate consideration, it is the unanimous and decided opinion of this Court that the act to incorporate the Bank of the United States is a law made in pursuance of the Constitution, and is a part of the supreme law of the land.

Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“Transnational corporate networks, and their resulting spatial patterns, are always in a continuous state of flux. At any one time, some parts may be growing rapidly, others may be stagnating, others may be in steep decline.”

Peter Dicken (1938) British geographer

Source: Global Shift (2003) (Fourth Edition), Chapter 8, Transnational Production Networks, p. 250

David Hume photo
Stephen King photo
Mohammad Khatami photo

“Of course we may assume many general and non-historical meanings for secularism, but turning a subject that is in all its existence a historical matter into a non-historical matter is a blatant mistake.”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

(Berlin Institute of Advanced Studies, Nov 2005).
Attributed

Related topics