China, c. 6th–4th c. BCE
Lao Tzu
Semi-legendary sage credited with the Tao Te Ching, the foundational text of Taoism. Counsels wu wei — effortless action, yielding, simplicity.
Lao Tzu in 37 lines
Every Lao Tzu passage in thinkr's library, with the theme each one speaks to.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.”
“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.”
“Silence is a source of great strength.”
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
“To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”
“The Tao is like a well: used but never used up. It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities. It is hidden but always present. I don't know who gave birth to it. It is older than God.”
“The Tao is like a bellows: it is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces; the more you talk of it, the less you understand.”
“The Tao is called the Great Mother: empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds.”
“Since before time and space were, the Tao is. It is beyond is and is not. How do I know this is true? I look inside myself and see.”
“A violent wind does not outlast the morning; a squall of rain does not outlast the day. Such is the course of Nature. And if Nature herself cannot sustain her efforts long, how much less can man!”
“He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.”
“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.”
“Block the passages, shut the doors, And till the end your strength shall not fail. Open up the passages, increase your doings, And till your last day no help shall come to you.”
“He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.”
“Governing a large country is like frying a small fish.”
“A journey of a thousand miles started with a first step.”
“A thousand-mile journey starts from your feet down there.”
“When men lack a sense of awe, there will be disaster.”
“People are difficult to be ruled, Because the ruler governs with personal desire and establishes too many laws to confuse the people.”
“Nothing that can be said in words is worth saying.”
“I am not at all interested in immortality, only in the taste of tea.”
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”
“What I hear, I forget. What I say, I remember. What I do, I understand.”
“When the center does not hold, the circle falls apart.”
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
“Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.”
“When I am anxious it is because I am living in the future. When I am depressed it is because I am living in the past.”
“An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox”
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
“Lao-tse may be regarded as the deepest thinker of Chinese antiquity.”
“Laotse packs his oracular wisdom into five thousand words of concentrated brilliance. No thinker ever wrote fewer words to embody a whole philosophy and had as much influence upon the thought of a nation.”
“Political leaders are never leaders. For leaders we have to look to the Awakeners! Lao Tse, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Gurdjiev, Krishnamurti.”
“Whoever speaks is not wise, whoever is wise always keep silence; I hear this message from Laozi. If Laozi is a wise man, why did he himself write Dao De Jing which has five thousand words?”
Where Lao Tzu lands on a hard choice
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what a position does when it meets a situation where every option costs something.
A friend asks if they made the right choice. They didn't.
You are resisting the urge to force the moment. The danger is mistaking avoidance for patience.
Someone you love is wrong in public.
You are separating the need to be right from the need to help. The risk is allowing falsehood to stand when silence has a cost.
You were wronged, and anger is giving you energy.
You are asking whether justice is still the goal, or whether the wound is asking to be fed. The risk is abandoning yourself too quickly.
Love asks you to change in ways you did not expect.
You are treating love as craft: adjustment without collapse. The risk is negotiating forever because decision feels too final.
Everyone in the room is avoiding the obvious problem.
You are respecting context, face, and sequence. The risk is making timing an alibi for cowardice.
Public life feels ugly, exhausting, and still important.
You are protecting the conditions for clear judgment. The danger is letting disgust become permanent exemption.
A friendship has become something you maintain alone.
You are ceasing to force a shape the friendship no longer has. The danger is calling withdrawal acceptance.
You were wrong in public and no one has noticed yet.
You are declining to inflate a small thing by confessing it loudly. The danger is that waiting is usually hoping.
The news makes you feel responsible and useless at once.
You are protecting the capacity you will need later. The danger is that later is a word people use for never.
Someone you love will not do the thing that would help them.
You are separating presence from control. The danger is calling it acceptance when it is really fatigue.
The good you did is only useful to others if they hear about it.
You are keeping the deed clean of its own publicity. The cost is influence you decline to use.
You finally have free hours and you waste every one of them.
You are trusting recovery that does not look like progress. The cost is a year of fallow you meant to be a week.
Lessons that quote Lao Tzu
- Lao Tzu & the Way — Wu wei and effortless action
Reading Lao Tzu today
Lao Tzu wrote in c. 6th–4th c. BCE, from China — a world with different assumptions about authority, death and what a life is for. That distance is useful rather than a problem: it is what lets the ideas cut against assumptions you did not know you were making.
In thinkr, Lao Tzu is one of 44 thinkers you can put a real question to, and the answers come back in that thinker's own voice and commitments rather than as a neutral summary. The 37 passages above are what the app draws on.
Argues the same cases
Immanuel Kant, Socrates, Aristotle, Confucius, David Hume, Ralph Waldo Emerson take positions on the same dilemmas as Lao Tzu, which is usually where the disagreements become concrete.