Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Integrity

Our biological proclivity for self-deception reaches remarkable heights of accomplishment when issues effect our pleasure, power, fame, or fortune. This skill may represent the heart of Goethe’s paradigm, “selling our souls to the devil.” Deception brings obvious gains in each of these four most common human motivations. These payments in slivers of our souls, however, become costly in terms of happiness, goodness, and integrity. The depth of our allegiance to these kinds of deception quickly rise to the surface of awareness when we try to do something anonymously, when we help someone who cannot give anything in return, when no one can see or know. Although probably the least common kind of human activity, it may epitomize the essence of integrity.

Most of us, most of the time stay busy trying to impress people looking for approval, praise and fame. This enslaves and sells our souls to the tyrants of public opinion, the status quo, and to external personal whim. As an antidote to this, the cloak of anonymity opens wide doors of personal expression, creativity, and innovation. In ancient times, perhaps less personal ego fostered this approach, perhaps names were just eroded away by time as is surely the case with many of the quotations that comes to us through the annals of history, perhaps people needed to avoid religious or political persecution. The venerable tradition of using pseudonyms exemplifies both the need and benefit of freeing ourselves from the narrow boxes defined by our personal histories.

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Quotes (128)

“Even those who do not know me—if there actions are straightforward, just and loving—venerate me with the truest kind of worship.”

Vyasa व्यास 1
Hindu immortals, Vishnu avatar, 5th incarnation of Brahma
from Mahābhārata महाभारतम्

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

King David 1000 – 920 BCE
"The baffled king composing Hallelujah!"
from Book of Psalms

Themes: Karma Integrity

“Badness can be got easily and in shoals; the road to her is smooth, and she lives very near us. But between us and Goodness the gods have placed the sweat of our brows”

Hesiod 846 – 777 BCE
“History’s first economist”
from Works and Days

“Those with outer courage dare to die, those with inner courage dare to live.”

Lao Tzu 老子 1 via Witter Bynner, Shan Dao #73
(Lǎozǐ)
from Way of Life According to Lao Tzu

“Speak or act with an impure mind and trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart. Do so with a pure mind however and happiness will follow you like your shadow, unshakable.”

Buddha गौतम बुद्ध 563 – 483 BCE via Jack Kornfiled, Shan Dao
(Siddhartha Shakyamuni Gautama)
Awakened Truth
from Dhammapada धम्मपद

Themes: Integrity

“If there were an honorable way to get rich, I’d do it, even if it meant being a stooge standing around with a whip. But there isn’t an honorable way, so I just do what I like.”

Confucius 孔丘 551 – 479 BCE
(Kongzi, Kǒng Zǐ)
History's most influential "failure"

Themes: Wealth Integrity

75. Greed

“Do not worry that people do not know you. Worry that you may not be worth knowing.”

Confucius 孔丘 551 – 479 BCE via Lin Yutang
(Kongzi, Kǒng Zǐ)
History's most influential "failure"

Themes: Integrity Fame

“Those who govern with virtue are like the North Star, which remains in its place while the myriad stars revolve around it.”

Confucius 孔丘 551 – 479 BCE
(Kongzi, Kǒng Zǐ)
History's most influential "failure"

17. True Leaders

“One skilled at battle takes a stand in the ground of no defeat… the victorious military is first victorious and after than does battle… And so one who is skilled cultivates Tao and preserves method.”

Sun Tzu 孙武 544 – 496 BCE via Denma Translation Group
(Sun Zi)
HIstory's supreme strategist
from Art of War 孙子兵法

Themes: Failure Integrity

60. Less is More

“Can you hold a red-hot iron rod in your hand merely because some one wants you to do so? Then, will it be right on your part to ask others to do the same thing just to satisfy your desires? If you cannot tolerate infliction of pain on your body or mind by others' words and actions, what right have you to do the same to others through your words and deeds?”

Mahavira 540 – 468 BCE
(Vardhamāna)
"the great hero”

Themes: Integrity

“For the wise, the whole earth becomes their tomb—an unwritten memorial commemorated in the hearts of humanity.”

Pericles 495 – 429 BCE via Thucydides, Shan Dao
Disprover that all power corrupts

Themes: Fame Integrity

“Use oneness [truthfulness] to put the 3 universal world virtues—wisdom, goodness, and courage—into practice.”

Zisi 子思 481 – 402 BCE via Daniel K. Gardner, Shan Dao
(Kong Ji or Tzu-Ssu)
Confucius' grandson and early influence on Neo-Confucianism
from Doctrine of the Mean, Maintaining Perfect Balance, Zhongyong 中庸

“Completion of the self is true goodness…the Way that unites external and internal.”

Zisi 子思 481 – 402 BCE via Daniel K. Gardner
(Kong Ji or Tzu-Ssu)
Confucius' grandson and early influence on Neo-Confucianism
from Doctrine of the Mean, Maintaining Perfect Balance, Zhongyong 中庸

“Educated men condemn murders and call them wrong but do not realize that a war of aggression against another country is wrong praising it and giving it their support… therefore it is clear they do not know the difference between right and wrong.”

Mozi 墨子 470 – 391 BCE via Lin Yutang, Shan Dao
(Mòzǐ)
Chinese personification of Newton, da Vinci, and Jesus

“There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.”

Plato Πλάτων 428 – 348 BCE

Themes: Integrity

44. Fame and Fortune

“He alone and first of men showed plain for all to see by the life he lived, by all the words he ever spoke to men, that the good man is the happy man, now, here, upon the earth.”

Aristotle Ἀριστοτέλης 382 – 322 BCE

Themes: Integrity
“Why must Your Majesty use the word ‘profit’? Surely, it is true goodness and righteousness alone that matter.”

Mencius 孟子 372 – 289 BCE via Daniel K. Gardner
(Mengzi)
from Book of Mencius 孟子

“To act without needing a reason… to ride the current of what is – this is the primal virtue.”

Chuang Tzu 莊周 369 – 286 BCE
(Zhuangzi)

2. The Wordless Teachings

“Do not let the artificial obliterate the natural; do not let will obliterate destiny; do not let virtue be sacrificed to fame”

Chuang Tzu 莊周 369 – 286 BCE via Jack Kerouac
(Zhuangzi)

“No evil can happen to a good man either in life or after death.”

Zeno Ζήνων ὁ Κιτιεύς 334 – 262 BCE via Edith Hamilton
(of Citium)

“Have regard for your name since it will remain for you longer than a great store of gold.”

Koheleth 1
from Ecclesiastes קֹהֶלֶת‎

Themes: Integrity Success

“The gentleman knows that whatever is imperfect and unrefined does not deserve praise. ... He makes his eyes not want to see what is not right, makes his ears not want to hear what is not right, makes his mouth not want to speak what is not right, and makes his heart not want to deliberate over what is not right. ... For this reason, power and profit cannot sway him, the masses cannot shift him, and nothing in the world can shake him.”

Xun Kuang 荀況 310 – 235 BCE
(Xún Kuàng, Xúnzǐ)
Early Confucian philosopher of "basic badness"

“The greatest of all victories is the victory of righteousness.”

Ashoka 304 – 232 BCE
One of the world's most enlightened leaders

Themes: Integrity Victory

“When the approval and disapproval of others become important, the honest and sincere expression of thoughts and feelings is lost.”

Lie Yukou 列圄寇/列禦寇/列子 1 via Eva Wong, Shan Dao
(Liè Yǔkòu, Liezi)
from Liezi "True Classic of Simplicity and Perfect Emptiness”

Themes: Integrity

20. Unconventional Mind

“We cultivate the Tao in the world by letting things change without giving orders Lao-tzu asks how we know that those who cultivate the Tao prosper and those who ignore the Tao perish. We know by comparing those who don’t cultivate the Tao with those who do.”

Heshang Gong 河上公 202 – 157 BCE
(Ho-shang Kung or "Riverside Sage”)

Themes: Integrity

54. Planting Well

“Yielding is being free of self-interest. Being free of self-interest is ruling the world. Ruling the world is merging personal virtue with that of Heaven and doing this is being one with the Way.”

Heshang Gong 河上公 202 – 157 BCE
(Ho-shang Kung or "Riverside Sage”)

16. Returning to the Root, Meditation

“There are 3 dangers in the world: To have many privileges but few virtues… To be high in rank but low on ability… To receive a large salary without personally accomplishing much… So ‘people may gain by loss and may lose by gain.”

Liú Ān 劉安 1 via Thomas Cleary
(Huainanzi)
from Huainanzi

Themes: Integrity Virtue

46. Enough

“Those who trust themselves cannot be swayed by slander or flattery. Those whose knowledge is sufficient cannot be enticed by power or profit.”

Liú Ān 劉安 1
(Huainanzi)
from Huainanzi

“Cultivating ourselves is like a bow, straightening our thoughts like arrow.”

Yang Xiong 揚雄 53 BCE – 18 CE via Michael Nylan, Shan Dao
from Fayan 法言, Exemplary Figures or Model Sayings

“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”

Jesus 3 BCE – 30 CE via Saint Mark
from New Testament Διαθήκη

“It is much better to die of hunger unhindered by grief and fear than to live affluently beset with worry, dread, suspicion, and unchecked desire.”

Epictetus Ἐπίκτητος 55 – 135 CE via Sharon Lebell
from Discourses of Epictetus, Ἐπικτήτου διατριβαί

Themes: Integrity

“I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.”

Plotinus 204 – 249 CE

Themes: Integrity

7. Lose Yourself, Gain Your Soul

“They are satisfied with their food because they taste the Tao. They are pleased with their clothing because they are adorned with virtue. They are content with their homes because they are content wherever they are.”

Chéng Xuanying 成玄英 631 – 655 CE
(Ch'eng Hsuan-ying)

80. A Golden Age

“Put your trust in the man who feeds the people after finishing his work.”

Lakshmincara ལཀྵྨཱིངྐ་རཱ།། 1 via Keith Dowman
(“The Princess of Crazy wisdom”)
from Masters of Mahamudra

67. Three Treasures

“First, eliminate the diseases of being chaotic and contrary, resolute and strong, brutal and overbearing, enraged, extravagant, profligate, boastful, ambitious, courageous, licentious, favored or favoring; then, grounded in noncontention, warfare will cease.”

Wang Zhen 809 – 859 CE
from Daodejing Lunbing Yaoyishu, The Tao of War

“go to places where men have no chance of seeking fame and wealth because there only can you look for disciples who are either wholly or at least half bent on the quest of truth.”

Huating Decheng 華亭德誠 820 – 858 CE via Charles Luk

Themes: Fame Integrity

“First improve yourself, then reach out to others and to later generations bequeath the noble, pure, and kindly Tao. Thus blessings reach your descendants, virtue grows, beauty lasts, and worship never ends.”

Cao Daochong 道寵 1
(​Daochong or Ts’ao Tao-Ch’ung)
from Lao-tzu-chu, Red Pine Translation

54. Planting Well

“Those concerned with taxes cannot avoid making claims on others and thus cannot prevent disputes. This is why they lack virtue.”

Wang Anshi 王安石 1021 – 1086 CE

Themes: Integrity

79. No Demands

“How shall one take vengeance on an enemy? By increasing one's good qualities.”

Solomon ibn Gabirol שלמה בן יהודה אבן גבירול 1021 – 1070 CE via Marcus
(Avicebron)

“What does it matter how the world sees you?”

Mekopa མེ་ཀོ་པ། 1050 CE –
("Guru Dread-Stare")
Mahasiddha #43

“The truly holy person welcomes all that is earthly.”

Hildegard of Bingen 1098 – 1179 CE

66. Go Low

“The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.”

Averroes, Ibn Rushd ابن رشد‎‎ 1126 – 1198 CE

“The most important thing to learn is how to discriminate between Righteousness and Profit.”

Lù Jiǔyuān 陸九淵 1139 – 1192 CE
(Lu Xiangshan)

“Outside, we govern others. Inside, we care for Heaven. In both, nothing surpasses the gardening of spirit… Only if we are still does virtue have a place to collect.”

Li Xizhai 1 via Red Pine
(Li Hsi-Chai)
from Tao-te-chen-ching yi-chieh

Themes: Virtue Integrity

59. The Gardening of Spirit

“Like a firebrand pointing downward but continuing to blaze up, the wise keep their integrity even when impoverished and maligned.”

Sakya Pandita ས་སྐྱ་པཎྜ་ཏ་ཀུན་དགའ་རྒྱལ་མཚན། 1182 – 1251 CE via John T. Davenport, Shan Dao #36
(Kunga Gyeltsen)
from Ordinary Wisdom, Sakya Legshe (Jewel Treasury of Good Advice)

Themes: Virtue Integrity

“You are like those who pass through the night pulling a light behind them. It doesn't profit themselves but makes those who follow them wise.”

Dante 1265 – 1321 CE via Purgatory XXII (tr: Shan Dao)
(Durante degli Alighieri)
from Divine Comedy (1320)

“Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”

Petrarch 1304 – 1374 CE

61. Lying Low

“What is a holy person? The one who is aware of others' suffering.”

Kabīr कबीर 1399 – 1448 CE

Themes: Integrity

67. Three Treasures

“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.”

Joan of Arc Jeanne d'Arc 1412 – 1431 CE
Mystical, visionary warrior

“Meditation beads and the forehead streak, those are my scarves and my rings. That's enough feminine wiles for me. I praise the Mountain Energy night and day.”

Meera 1498 – 1546 CE
(Mirabai, Meera Bai )
Inspiring poet, cultural freedom inspiration

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”

William Shakespeare 1564 – 1616 CE
from All's Well That Ends Well

Themes: Integrity

“Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.”

John Donne 1572 – 1631 CE

Themes: Integrity

38. Fruit Over Flowers

“Grace is everything - the breath of speech, the life of talent, the soul of action... without it, beauty is lifeless.”

Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE via Joseph Jacobs, chapter #127
from Art of Worldly Wisdom

Themes: Integrity Beauty

“You may be obliged to wage war but not to use poisoned arrows.”

Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE via Joseph Jacobs, chapter #166
from Art of Worldly Wisdom

Themes: Integrity

“Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore, endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.”

Blaise Pascal 1623 – 1662 CE
One of the greatest French writers of all time
from Pensée

“To do good is his worship... The Mohammedan cries out , 'Beware if you fail to make the pilgrimage to Mecca!'–the priest, 'Curses on you if you do not make the trip to Notre Dame'... He succors the indigent and defends those oppressed.”

Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 1694 – 1778 CE
from Philosophical Dictionary

Themes: Integrity

“Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.”

Diderot 1713 – 1784 CE

Themes: Forget Integrity

“Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.”

Thomas Paine 1737 – 1809 CE
from The Rights of Man, 1792

“The first duty of man is to take none of the principles of conduct upon trust; to do nothing without a clear and individual conviction that it is right to be done.”

William Godwin 1756 – 1836 CE
Provocative and influential social, political, and literary critic
from Enquiry Concerning Political Justice

Themes: Integrity

“this homage to women’s attractions has distorted their understanding to such an extent that almost all the civilized women of the present century are anxious only to inspire love, when they ought to have the nobler aim of getting respect for their abilities and virtues.”

Mary Wollstonecraft 1759 – 1797 CE
Seminal feminist
from Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Themes: Integrity

“Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.”

Madame de Staël 1766 – 1817 CE
(Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein)
"The greatest woman of her time"

Themes: Integrity

“Our own heart, and not other men's opinions, forms our true honor.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 – 1834 CE

Themes: Integrity

13. Honor and Disgrace

“All religion is antagonistic to culture... genuine morality is dependent on no religion”

Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 – 1860 CE via R.J. Hollingdale
from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Integrity Culture

“Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.”

Lord Byron 1788 – 1824 CE
(George Gordon Byron)
The first rock-star style celebrity

“The main quality that goes into a Man of Achievement is ‘Negative Capability’—the capacity for staying with uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

John Keats 1795 – 1821 CE via Shan Dao
Writer of "poems as immortal as English"

Themes: Integrity

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882 CE
Champion of individualism
from Self-Reliance

Themes: Integrity

“A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives—approving of some and disapproving of others... I ought or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.”

Charles Darwin 1809 – 1882 CE
from Descent of Man

“I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln 1809 – 1865 CE

38. Fruit Over Flowers

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862 CE
Father of environmentalism and America's first yogi
from Walden or Life in the Woods

Themes: Integrity

21. Following Empty Heart

“Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.”

George Henry Lewes 1817 – 1878 CE
English philosopher and soul mate to George Eliot
from Rose, Blanche, and Violet​

Themes: Integrity

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation… the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity… he has no time to be anything but a machine.”

Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862 CE
Father of environmentalism and America's first yogi
from Walden or Life in the Woods

Themes: Integrity

72. Helpful Fear

“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.”

Frederick Douglass 1818 – 1895 CE
International symbol of social justice

36. The Small, Dark Light

“That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would we are part of the Divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.”

George Eliot 1819 – 1880 CE
(Mary Anne Evans)
Pioneering literary outsider

from Middlemarch

“Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness”

Herman Melville 1819 – 1891 CE
from Moby Dick or The Whale

Themes: Integrity

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский 1821 – 1881 CE via Constance Garnett
from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Integrity Lies

“the will to a system is a lack of integrity”

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900 CE
from Twilight of the Idols

Themes: Integrity

21. Following Empty Heart

“The true basis of morality is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness; the endeavor so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind.”

Annie Besant 1847 – 1933 CE

“I used to think meanly of the plumber; but how he shines beside the politician!”

Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894 CE

75. Greed

“To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.”

Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894 CE

Themes: Integrity

38. Fruit Over Flowers

“If, in the present chaotic and shameful struggle for existence, when organized society offers a premium on greed, cruelty, and deceit, men can be found who stand aloof and almost alone in their determination to work for good rather than gold.”

Lucy Parsons 1853 – 1942 CE
(Eldine Gonzalez)
Political activist “more dangerous than a thousand rioters”

“But it is a great happiness in life to meet a person of quite different construction, different bent, completely dissimilar views who, while always remaining himself and in no wise echoing us nor currying favor with us and not trying to insinuate his soul into our psyche, into our muddle, into our tangle, would stand as a firm wall, as a check to our follies and our irrationalities, which every human being has.”

Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov Васи́лий Васи́льевич Рóзанов 1856 – 1919 CE

Themes: Integrity

“The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.”

John Dewey 1859 – 1952 CE
The "Second Confucius"

Themes: Integrity

“Conformity is wiser than hot denials, tolerance wiser than priggishness and puritanism. It is not what earnest people renounce that makes me pity them, it is what they work for.”

Santayana, George 1863 – 1952 CE
(Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás)
Powerfully influential, true-to-himself philosopher/poet
from War Shrines

Themes: Integrity

“If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,… Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.”

Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936 CE
Greatest—in-English—short-story writer

from If—

Themes: Integrity

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948 CE

“It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business. what is true is that honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune.”

Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948 CE
from Non-Violence in Peaace and War (1948)

“The two great tests of character are wealth and poverty.”

Charles Beard 1874 – 1948 CE
(Austin)
Pioneering progressive historian

“All moral discipline, all moral perfection derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dignity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics... civilization!”

Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955 CE
Deep, psychologically insightful author
from The Magic Mountain (1924)

“A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.”

Albert Schweitzer 1875 – 1965 CE

“Everything depends on the man and little or nothing on the method.”

Carl Jung 1875 – 1961 CE
Insightful shamanistic scientist

Themes: Integrity

“I knew that in this laughter were courage and integrity. Both the old man and my brother turned pale, awed by my courage and integrity.”

Lǔ Xùn 鲁迅 1881 – 1936 CE
(Zhou Shuren; Lusin)
Insightful satirist representing the "Literature of Revolt"

from A Madman's Diary

“She was beautiful in her ignorance, virtuous in her simplicity, and strong in her weakness. Today she has become ugly in her ingenuity, superficial and heartless in her knowledge. Will the day ever come when beauty and knowledge, ingenuity and virtue, and weakness of body and strength of spirit will be united… ?”

Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931 CE

61. Lying Low

“They who define their conduct by ethics imprison their song-bird in a cage.”

Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931 CE
from The Prophet

“the true man is he who resists, struggles, and is not afraid, in time of great need, to say no, even to God... Hero together with saint: that was the perfect man.”

Nikos Kazantzakis 1883 – 1957 CE
from Report to Greco

Themes: Integrity

“It is our duty to set ourselves an end beyond our individual concerns, beyond our convenient, agreeable habits, higher than our own selves, and disdaining laughter, hunger, even death, to toil night and day to attain that end... Not to attain it, but never to halt in the ascent. Only then does life acquire nobility and oneness.”

Nikos Kazantzakis 1883 – 1957 CE via P. A. Bien
from Report to Greco

“The harmony of the part with the whole may be the best definition of health, beauty, truth, wisdom, morality, and happiness.”

Will (and Ariel) Durant 1885 – 1981 CE
from Heroes of History

39. Oneness

“You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951 CE
One of the world's most famous philosophers

Themes: Integrity

“The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969 CE

“religious in the only way that is becoming—extracting the utmost of life from every passing minute.”

Henry Miller 1891 – 1980 CE
from The Colossus of Maroussi

“Laziness in doing stupid things can be a great virtue.”

James Hilton 1900 – 1954 CE
from Lost Horizon

Themes: Integrity

29. Not Doing

“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”

Erich Fromm 1900 – 1980 CE
One of the most powerful voices of his era promoting the true personal freedom beyond social, political, religious, and national belief systems
from The Sane Society

Themes: Virtue Integrity

71. Sick of Sickness

“Truth, for any man, is that which makes him a man.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944 CE
from Wind, Sand, and Stars (1939)

Themes: Integrity Truth
“We do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves.”

Karl Popper 1902 – 1994 CE via Patrick Camiller
Major Philosopher of Science
from On Freedom (1958)

Themes: Freedom Integrity

“We do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves.”

Karl Popper 1902 – 1994 CE via Patrick Camiller
Major Philosopher of Science
from On Freedom (1958)

Themes: Integrity

“Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.”

Anais Nin 1903 – 1977 CE

26. The Still Rule the Restless

“We watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints… which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”

Viktor Frankl 1905 – 1997 CE
Brave and insightful concentration camp survivor

from Man's Search for Meaning

Themes: Integrity

“Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.”

James Michener 1907 – 1997 CE
Historical and Generational Saga Master


from Chesapeake (1978)

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

Masanobu Fukuoka 福岡 正信 1913 – 2008 CE via Korn
from One Straw Revolution

Themes: Integrity

52. Cultivating the Changeless

“I can never really get sexy—I mean really sexy—with a girl I don't like a lot. I mean I have to like her a lot. If I don't, I sort of lose my goddam desire for her and all. Boy it really screws up my sex life something awful. My sex life stinks.”

J. D. Salinger 1919 – 2010 CE
from Catcher in the Rye

Themes: Integrity

“all legitimate religious study must lead to unlearning the differences, the illusory differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold.”

J. D. Salinger 1919 – 2010 CE via Zooey
from Franny and Zooey

“The Tao Te Ching builds this social and moral concern into its very title by placing 'integrity' (te) at its center... these themes betrays its Chinese signature and stands as a healthy reminder that mysticism need not be otherworldly.”

Huston Smith 1919 – 2016 CE
from Introduction, Mair translation Tao Te Ching

Themes: Integrity

You can say the Jesus Prayer from now til doomsday but if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don't see how you'll ever even move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness.”

J. D. Salinger 1919 – 2010 CE via Zooey
from Franny and Zooey

Themes: Integrity Desire

“The goal of spiritual life is not altered states, but altered traits.”

Huston Smith 1919 – 2016 CE

Themes: Integrity

“The essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere.”

Huston Smith 1919 – 2016 CE
from World's Religions

Themes: Integrity Virtue

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 1922 – 2007 CE
“A darkly humorous social critic and the premier novelist of the counterculture"

“My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.”

Thích Nhất Hạnh tʰǐk ɲɜ̌t hɐ̂ʔɲ 1926 CE –

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

Maya Angelou 1928 – 2014 CE

Themes: Integrity

“It was more than dignity. Integrity? Wholeness? Like a block of wood not carved. The infinite possibility, the unlimited and unqualified wholeness of being of the uncommitted, the nonacting, the uncarved: the being who, being nothing but himself, is everything.”

Ursula Le Guin 1929 – 2018 CE

Themes: Integrity

50. Claws and Swords

“Power refers to the freedom people have within limits, strength to the freedom people have with limits... Power is concerned with what has already happened, strength with what has yet to happen.”

James P. Carse 1932 – 2020 CE
Thought-proving, influential, deep thinker
from Finite and Infinite Games

Themes: Integrity

“In many if not most cases, the more success, the less integrity. The cost of most success is our integrity.”

Shan Dao 山道 1933 CE –

Themes: Success Integrity

“Avoid teams at all cost - there is no ‘I’ in team… but there is an ‘I’ in independence, individuality and integrity.”

George Carlin 1937 – 2008 CE
One of the most influential social commentators of his time

38. Fruit Over Flowers

“If you have awareness... you do not cheat, you do not do things just because they are traditional, and you don't just do something this year simply because you did it last year... honesty and genuineness begin to hurt.”

Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE via Judith Lief, editor
from Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

Themes: Integrity

“Devotion is building oneself up without kleshas, it makes you smile and in whatever we do with appreciation makes us feel wholesome.”

Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE

Themes: Integrity

“Damn the money. Damn the heavyweight championship... I will die before I sell out my people for the white man's money.”

Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016 CE
(Cassius Clay)
from Esquire magazine interview, 1968

Themes: Integrity

“I rank Cicero—my favorite Roman—with Gandhi and Churchill as models of the whole person, a person shaped by the great books, a person of thought and action, who lived and died for his ideals. Like Plato, Cicero believed that God had established a set of absolute values, including wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation.”

J. Rufus Fears 1945 – 2012 CE
from Books That Made History

Themes: Integrity

“the rarest thing in life is a person who speaks the truth. The most dangerous thing in life is a person who constantly refers to 'values.'... None of us has the right to hold back anybody else for any reason.”

Neal Stephenson 1959 CE –
(Stephen Bury)
Speculative futurist and cultural social commentator

from Interface (1994)

Themes: Integrity

“Integrity is when our words and deeds are consistent with our intentions... it is also about being honest when we disagree or, when we make mistakes or missteps.”

Simon Sinek 1973 CE –
from Leaders Eat Last

Themes: Integrity

“The history of ethics is a sad tale of wonderful ideals that nobody can live up to. Most Christians did not imitate Christ, most Buddhists failed to follow Buddha, and most Confucians would have caused Confucius a temper tantrum. In contrast, most people today successfully live up to the capitalist–consumerist ideal.”

Yuval Harari יובל נח הררי‎ 1976 CE –
Israeli historian, professor, and philosopher

from Sapiens

Sources

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