Tao Te Ching
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.
Quotes (125)
“Even those who do not know me—if there actions are straightforward, just and loving—venerate me with the truest kind of worship.”
“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”
“Those with outer courage dare to die, those with inner courage dare to live.”
“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.”
“Do not worry that people do not know you. Worry that you may not be worth knowing.”
“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.”
“Those who govern with virtue are like the North Star, which remains in its place while the myriad stars revolve around it.”
“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.”
“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?”
“For the wise, the whole earth becomes their tomb—an unwritten memorial commemorated in the hearts of humanity.”
“Use oneness [truthfulness] to put the 3 universal world virtues—wisdom, goodness, and courage—into practice.”
“Completion of the self is true goodness…the Way that unites external and internal.”
“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.”
“There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.”
“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.”
“Why must Your Majesty use the word ‘profit’? Surely, it is true goodness and righteousness alone that matter.”
“Do not let the artificial obliterate the natural; do not let will obliterate destiny; do not let virtue be sacrificed to fame”
“To act without needing a reason… to ride the current of what is – this is the primal virtue.”
“Have regard for your name since it will remain for you longer than a great store of gold.”
“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.”
“When the approval and disapproval of others become important, the honest and sincere expression of thoughts and feelings is lost.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Those who trust themselves cannot be swayed by slander or flattery. Those whose knowledge is sufficient cannot be enticed by power or profit.”
“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.”
“Cultivating ourselves is like a bow, straightening our thoughts like arrow.”
“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”
“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.”
“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.”
“Put your trust in the man who feeds the people after finishing his work.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“How shall one take vengeance on an enemy? By increasing one's good qualities.”
“Those concerned with taxes cannot avoid making claims on others and thus cannot prevent disputes. This is why they lack virtue.”
“The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.”
“The most important thing to learn is how to discriminate between Righteousness and Profit.”
“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.”
“Like a firebrand pointing downward but continuing to blaze up, the wise keep their integrity even when impoverished and maligned.”
“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.”
“Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Grace is everything - the breath of speech, the life of talent, the soul of action... without it, beauty is lifeless.”
“Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore, endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.”
“Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.”
“Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.”
“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.”
“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.”
“All religion is antagonistic to culture... genuine morality is dependent on no religion”
“Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”
“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.”
“Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.”
“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I used to think meanly of the plumber; but how he shines beside the politician!”
“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.”
“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.”
“The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
“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.”
“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!”
“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.”
“They who define their conduct by ethics imprison their song-bird in a cage.”
“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… ?”
“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.”
“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.”
“The harmony of the part with the whole may be the best definition of health, beauty, truth, wisdom, morality, and happiness.”
“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.”
“religious in the only way that is becoming—extracting the utmost of life from every passing minute.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere.”
“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.”
“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.”
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
“My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.”
“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.”
“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.”
“In many if not most cases, the more success, the less integrity. The cost of most success is our integrity.”
“Avoid teams at all cost - there is no ‘I’ in team… but there is an ‘I’ in independence, individuality and integrity.”
“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.”
“Devotion is building oneself up without kleshas, it makes you smile and in whatever we do with appreciation makes us feel wholesome.”
“Damn the money. Damn the heavyweight championship... I will die before I sell out my people for the white man's money.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Without a Just Cause, an organization starts to function like a ship without a compass.”
“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.”
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