Quotes by Lao Tzu

Laozi is the name attached to the Tao Te Ching, eighty-one short chapters that are among the most translated texts in the world. Whether a single sixth-century BC archivist wrote them is disputed; the traditional story has him composing the book at a frontier gate on his way out of civilisation. Its argument is for yielding rather than forcing, and for the strength of what appears weak. The compression that makes it quotable also makes it endlessly re-interpretable.