“Such being its nature, without any display, it becomes manifested; without any movement, it produces changes; and without any effort, it accomplishes its ends.”
The Analects, The Doctrine of the Mean
Context: To entire sincerity there belongs ceaselessness. Not ceasing, it continues long. Continuing long, it evidences itself. Evidencing itself, it reaches far. Reaching far, it becomes large and substantial. Large and substantial, it becomes high and brilliant. Large and substantial; this is how it contains all things. High and brilliant; this is how it overspreads all things. Reaching far and continuing long; this is how it perfects all things. So large and substantial, the individual possessing it is the co-equal of Earth. So high and brilliant, it makes him the co-equal of Heaven. So far-reaching and long-continuing, it makes him infinite. Such being its nature, without any display, it becomes manifested; without any movement, it produces changes; and without any effort, it accomplishes its ends.
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Confucius269
Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher -551–-479 BCRelated quotes
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism
“What is liberal education,” p. 5 [The phrase “specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart.” is from Max Weber]
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher
6th Public Talk, Saanen (28 July 1970) 'The Mechanical Activity of Thought" http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/the-impossible-question/1970-07-28-jiddu-krishnamurti-the-impossible-question-the-mechanical-activity-of-thought in The Impossible Question (1972) http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=9&chid=57009, Part I, Ch. 6], p. 63 J.Krishnamurti Online, Serial No. 330 <br class="br">1970s <br class="br">Context: What does it mean to be compassionate? Not merely verbally, but actually to be compassionate? Is compassion a matter of habit, of thought, a matter of the mechanical repetition of being kind, polite, gentle, tender? Can the mind which is caught in the activity of thought with its conditioning, its mechanical repetition, be compassionate at all? It can talk about it, it can encourage social reform, be kind to the poor heathen and so on; but is that compassion? When thought dictates, when thought is active, can there be any place for compassion? Compassion being action without motive, without self-interest, without any sense of fear, without any sense of pleasure.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist
1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)
Bruce Wilshire (1932–2015) American philosopher
Source: Fashionable Nihilism (2002), p. xii
“They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
Frank Van Dun (1947) Belgian law philosopher
Natural Law, Liberalism and Christianity (2001).
“Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change?”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
VII, 18
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …
ARTnews annual, Volume 31, Art Foundation, 1966, p. 56
1960s
Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers
Zeno, 53.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 7: The Stoics