Top 100 Mencius Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Treat your elders as elders, and extend it to the elders of others; treat your young ones as young ones, and extend it to the young ones of others; then you can turn the whole world in the palm of your hand.”

— Mencius

52. “He who attends to his greater self becomes a great man, and he who attends to his smaller self becomes a small man.”

— Mencius

53. “Mankind fears an evil man but heaven does not.”

— Mencius

54. “The myriad things are complete in us. There is no greater joy than to reflect on ourselves and become sincere.”

— Mencius

55. “If you let people follow their feelings, they will be able to do good. This is what is meant by saying that human nature is good.”

— Mencius

56. “The way is One and only One. The way is close at hand, but men seek it afar.”

— Mencius

57. “All things are already complete in us. There is no greater delight than to be conscious of right within us. If one strives to treat others as he would be treated by them, he shall not fail to come near the perfect life.”

— Mencius

58. “The ways are two: love and want of love. That is all.”

— Mencius

59. “Benevolence is one of the distinguishing characters of man.”

— Mencius

60. “Never has there been one possessed of complete sincerity who did not move others. Never has there been one who had not sincerity who was able to move others.”

— Mencius

61. “All things are complete within ourselves.”

— Mencius

62. “Only those who develop their minds and spirits to the utmost can serve Heaven and fulfill their own destinies.”

— Mencius

63. “A small country cannot contend with a great; the few cannot contend with the many; the weak cannot contend with the strong.”

— Mencius

64. “Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men’s minds are also injured by them.”

— Mencius

65. “One who believes all of a book would be better off without books.”

— Mencius

66. “Evil exists to glorify the good. Evil is negative good. It is a relative term. Evil can be transmuted into good. What is evil to one at one time, becomes good at another time to somebody else.”

— Mencius

67. “Every duty is a charge, but the charge of oneself is the root of all others.”

— Mencius

68. “Water indeed will flow indifferently to the east or west, but will it flow indifferently up or down? The tendency of our nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards. There are none but have this tendency to good, just as all water flows downward.”

— Mencius

69. “Listen to a man’s words and look at the pupil of his eye. How can a man conceal his character?”

— Mencius

70. “The poor attend to their own virtue in solitude.”

— Mencius

71. “If the prince of a State love benevolence, he will have no opponent in all the empire.”

— Mencius

72. “There is a power in everything; it is the job of the artist to determine it and express it.”

— Mencius

73. “Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.”

— Mencius

74. “The Way lies at hand yet it is sought afar off; the thing lies in the easy yet it is sought in the difficult.”

— Mencius

75. “Friendship with a man is friendship with his virtue, and does not admit of assumptions of superiority.”

— Mencius

76. “The tendency of mans nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downward.”

— Mencius

77. “He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature.”

— Mencius

78. “He who outrages benevolence is called a ruffian: he who outrages righteousness is called a villain. I have heard of the cutting off of the villain Chow, but I have not heard of the putting of a ruler to death.”

— Mencius

79. “To feed men and not to love them is to treat them as if they were barnyard cattle. To love them and not respect them is to treat them as if they were household pets.”

— Mencius

80. “The five kinds of grains are considered good plants, but if the grains are not ripe, they are worse than cockles. It is the same with regard to kindness, which must grow into maturity.”

— Mencius

81. “The people turn in allegiance to Humanity, as surely as water flows downward or as a wild animal takes cover in the wilderness.”

— Mencius

82. “The regular path of virtue is to be pursued without any bend, and from no view to emolument.”

— Mencius

83. “All people have the common desire to be elevated in honour, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.”

— Mencius

84. “Incessant falls teach men to reform, and distress rouses their strength. Life springs from calamity, and death from ease.”

— Mencius

85. “Where it is permissible both to die and not to die, it is an abuse of valour to die.”

— Mencius

86. “To lay hold of the mean without taking into account the occasion is like grasping one thing only.”

— Mencius

87. “Getting something done is like digging a well. You can dig a well seventy feet deep, but if you don’t hit water it’s just an abandoned well.”

— Mencius

88. “La amistad es una mente en dos cuerpos.”

— Mencius

89. “Treat others as you would be treated. Devote yourself to that, for there’s no more direct approach to Humanity.”

— Mencius

90. “There’s only one way to know if people are good or evil: look at the choices they make. We each contain precious and worthless, great and small. Never injure the great for the sake of the small, or the precious for the sake of the worthless. Small people nurture what is small in them; great people nurture what is great in them.”

— Mencius

91. “For nurturing the mind, there’s nothing like paring your desires away to a very few. If you have few desires, there may still be some capricious whims in your mind, but they’ll be few. If you have many desires, there may be some enduring principles in your mind, but they’ll be few indeed.”

— Mencius

92. “All beneath Heaven is rooted in nation. Nation is rooted in family. And family is rooted in self.”

— Mencius

93. “When men are subdued by force, they do not submit in their minds, but only because their strength is inadequate. When men are subdued by power in personality they are pleased to their very heart’s core and do really submit.”

— Mencius

94. “People are distressed by their inability to do it. The problem, however, is simply that they don’t do it.”

— Mencius

95. “Words that defy reality are ominous. And it’s ominous reality that confronts those who would obscure the wise and worthy.”

— Mencius

96. “Don’t do what should not be done, and don’t desire what should not be desired. Abide by this one precept, and everything else will follow.”

— Mencius

97. “Make your learning abundant and speak of it with precision, then you will speak of essentials.”

— Mencius

98. “Words that speak of things close at hand and carry far-reaching implications – those are the good words.”

— Mencius

99. “There are people dying from famine on the roads, and you do not issue the stores of your granaries for them. When people die, you say, ‘it is not owing to me, it is owing to the year.’ In what does this differ from stabbing a man and killing him, and then saying, ’it was not I, it was the weapon?”

— Mencius

100. “There are things a person wants more than life and there are also things he or she loathes more than death.”

— Mencius