Xunzi Quotes on Virtue
Xunzi (c. 310–235 BC) developed the most rigorous Confucian alternative to Mencius's doctrine of innate human goodness. Human nature, Xunzi argues, is bad — left to itself it produces only competition, disorder, and the satisfaction of immediate desire — and the moral and political achievements of civilization are therefore artificial in the strict sense, the product of accumulated ritual practice (li) and deliberate education through which the sage-kings of antiquity transformed unruly human material into properly cultivated members of an ordered society. The framework grounds Xunzi's distinctive emphasis on ritual as the principal technology of moral cultivation and his sharper political realism, and supplied the philosophical resources that Han Fei would later turn in a Legalist direction Xunzi himself rejected.
Quotes
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Attributed to Xunzi:
“Human nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity.”
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Attributed to Xunzi:
“Learning should never cease.”
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Attributed to Xunzi:
“Without ritual no person can develop, no enterprise can be completed, and no state can be at peace.”
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Attributed to Xunzi:
“The gentleman knows that what is incomplete and unrefined cannot be called beauty.”
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“Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity.”
Quoted in: Fayek S. Hourani (2012) Daily Bread for Your Mind and Soul, p. 336 -
“Not having heard of it is not as good as having heard of it. Having heard of it is not as good as having seen it. Having seen it is not as good as knowing it. Knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice. Learning arrives at putting it into practice and then stops.”
As translated by Eric L. Hutton in Xunzi: The Complete Text (2024), Ch. 8 :The Achievements of the Ru | Variant translations: | Not having learned it is not as good as having learned it; having learned it is not as good as having seen it carried out; having seen it is not as good as understanding it; understanding it is not as good as doing it. The development of scholarship is to the extreme of d -
“Not having learned it is not as good as having learned it; having learned it is not as good as having seen it carried out; having seen it is not as good as understanding it; understanding it is not as good as doing it. The development of scholarship is to the extreme of doing it, and that is its end and goal. He who carries it out, knows it thoroughly. As translated in The Works of Hsüntze (1928) by Homer H. Dubs”
Not having heard of it is not as good as having heard of it. Having heard of it is not as good as having seen it. Having seen it is not as good as knowing it. Knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice. Learning arrives at putting it into practice and then stops.