Authors / Confucius

Confucius quotes

551 BC–479 BC · Chinese teacher and philosopher

The Analects were compiled by his followers after his death. We quote James Legge's classic 1861 translation, numbered by book and passage; the slick modern "Confucius says" lines usually have no Analects source at all.

4 real · 2 not theirs

Really theirs

4 quotes traced to Confucius's own work or a reliable witness.

Sourced

Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Source: Analects 2.15, tr. James Legge

Sourced

To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage.

Source: Analects 2.24, tr. James Legge

Sourced

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

Source: Analects 15.24, tr. James Legge

Sourced

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it — this is knowledge.

Source: Analects 2.17, tr. James Legge

Not theirs

2 famous lines credited to Confucius that are misquoted, unsourced or belong to someone else.

Not theirs

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

Actually: No Analects source; the saying appears only in 20th-century print.

No source found

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

The trail: No matching passage in the Analects.