Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness.
Interpretation
This quote illustrates how gentleness and persistence can overcome obstacles.
Laozi's quote emphasizes the paradoxical nature of water, which is soft yet powerful enough to shape landscapes over time. It conveys a profound philosophical principle that gentleness and resilience can conquer rigidity and adversity, suggesting that strength does not always come from force but can arise from softness and persistence.
In practice
Using this quote during a motivational speech about resilience and persistence in the face of challenges.
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.
Free speech has been used by the Supreme Court to give immense power to the wealthiest members of our society.
I doubt that religion can survive deep understanding. The shallows are its natural habitat. Cranks and fundamentalists are too often victimised as scapegoats for religion in general. It is only quite recently that Christianity reinvented itself in non-fundamentalist guise, and Islam has yet to do so.
For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.
Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.
For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?
No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.
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