When the palace is magnificent, the fields are filled with weeds, and the granaries are empty.
Interpretation
A critique of superficial luxury at the expense of essential needs and well-being.
This quote from Laozi highlights the imbalance in society where extravagant displays of wealth and power overshadow the neglected basic necessities of life, like agriculture and food security. It serves as a reminder that true prosperity and stability arise from nurturing the foundational aspects of society rather than pursuing mere opulence.
In practice
During a speech about sustainable development, you could use this quote to emphasize the importance of agriculture.
If you understand others you are smart._x000D_ If you understand yourself you are illuminated._x000D_ If you overcome others you are powerful._x000D_ If you overcome yourself you have strength._x000D_ If you know how to be satisfied you are rich._x000D_ If you can act with vigor, you have a will._x000D_ If you don't lose your objectives you can be long-lasting._x000D_ If you die without loss, you are eternal.
When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.
In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.
Rule your mind with serenity rather than with force and manipulation.
Negativity is often looked upon [in the USA] as a kind of thought crime. Not since the advent of socialist realism has the world witnessed such pathological upbeatness.
The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.
It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
I have always had trouble recognizing myself in the features of the intellectual playing his political role according to the screenplay that you are familiar with and whose heritage deserves to be questioned.
(What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness).Familiarity can blind you too.
I went looking for embodiments of pure evil, but found ordinary people.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.