Mozi Quotes on Virtue
Mozi (c. 470–391 BC) and the Mohist canon his school produced developed an austere consequentialist ethics in direct opposition to the elaborate ritualism of the early Confucian tradition. The cardinal virtue is universal love (jian'ai) — equal concern for all persons regardless of family, clan, or state — justified by the calculus of benefit (li) and harm that the Mohists made the standard of moral evaluation. The corollary positions — rejection of elaborate funeral rites and music as wasteful, criticism of fatalism, condemnation of offensive war — follow from the same consequentialist framework, and the school's epistemological standards (the three tests of any doctrine: precedent of the sage-kings, evidence of the senses, practical benefit when applied) supply one of the earliest systematic methodologies for political and moral argument in the Chinese tradition.
Quotes
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Attributed to Mozi:
“Music is delightful, but it cannot feed the hungry or clothe the cold.”
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Attributed to Mozi:
“To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime; to kill ten men is to increase the guilt tenfold; to kill a hundred men is to increase it a hundredfold. But to kill ten thousand men in war is called righteousness.”
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Attributed to Mozi:
“It is the business of the benevolent man to seek to promote what is beneficial to the world and to eliminate what is harmful.”
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“If one does not preserve the learned in a state he will be injuring the state ; if one is not zealous (to recommend) the virtuous upon seeing one, he will be neglecting the ruler. Enthusiasm is to be shown only to the virtuous, and plans for the country are only to be shared with the learned. Few are those, who, neglecting the virtuous and slighting the learned, could still maintain the existence of their countries.”
Book 1; Befriending the Learned | Variant translation: To enter upon rulership of a country but not preserve its scholars will result in the downfall of the country. To see the worthy but not hasten to them will make the country's ruler less able to perform his duties. To the unworthy is due no attention. The ignorant should remain without inclusion in the state's affairs. To impede the virtuous a -
“Variant translation: To enter upon rulership of a country but not preserve its scholars will result in the downfall of the country. To see the worthy but not hasten to them will make the country's ruler less able to perform his duties. To the unworthy is due no attention. The ignorant should remain without inclusion in the state's affairs. To impede the virtuous and neglect the scholarly and still maintain the survival of the state has yet to be, indeed.”
If one does not preserve the learned in a state he will be injuring the state ; if one is not zealous (to recommend) the virtuous upon seeing one, he will be neglecting the ruler. Enthusiasm is to be shown only to the virtuous, and plans for the country are only to be shared with the learned. Few are those, who, neglecting the virtuous and slighting the learned, could still maintain the existence -
“The virtuous who are prosperous must be exalted, and the virtuous who are not prosperous must be exalted too.”
Book 2; Exaltation of the Virtuous I -
“Book 2; Exaltation of the Virtuous I”
The virtuous who are prosperous must be exalted, and the virtuous who are not prosperous must be exalted too.