Laozi

Abandon sageliness and discard wisdom, and the people will benefit a hundredfold. Abandon benevolence and discard righteousness, and the people will return to filial piety and paternal love. Abandon skill and discard profit, and there will be no thieves or robbers.

The sage rules by emptying their minds and filling their bellies, by weakening their wills and strengthening their bones.

The soft and the weak overcome the hard and the strong.

He who boasts of his own achievements will not endure.

The heaviest thing in the world is a human heart.

When the government is lax, the people are simple. When the government is meddlesome, the people are discontented.

The sage wears coarse clothes and carries jewels in his bosom.

If a nation is to be great, it must be like a great river, it must flow freely in every direction.

One who is too insistent on his own views finds few who agree with him.

No thought, no action, no movement, total stillness: only thus can one manifest the true nature and law of things... and at last become one with heaven and earth.

Do that which consists in taking no action; Pursue that which is not meddlesome; Savor that which has no flavor.

Make the small big and the few many; Do good to him who has done you an injury.

Difficult things in the world must needs have their beginnings in the easy; Big things must needs have their beginnings in the small.

Therefore it is because the sage never attempts to be great that he succeeds in becoming great.

One who makes promises rashly rarely keeps good faith; One who is in the habit of considering things easy meets with frequent difficulties.

Therefore even the sage treats some things as difficult. That is why in the end no difficulties can get the better of him.

Use justice to rule a country. Use surprise to wage war. Use non-action to govern the world.

I do not act, and people become reformed by themselves. I am at peace, and people become fair by themselves. I do not interfere, and people become rich by themselves.

Act without action. Those who act will fail. Those who seize will lose.

He (the sage) wants all things to follow their own nature, but dares not act.