King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Quotes about leaders and rulers

  1. There are three ways in which a ruler can bring misfortune upon his army: —

  2. Mencius said, 'If the sovereign be benevolent, all will be benevolent. If the sovereign be righteous, all will be righteous.'

  3. The Master said, "The full observance of the rules of propriety in serving one's prince is accounted by people to be flattery.

  4. The consummate leader cultivates the moral law, and strictly adheres to method and discipline; thus it is in his power to control success.

  5. Tsze-yu said, "In serving a prince, frequent remonstrances lead to disgrace. Between friends, frequent reproofs make the friendship distant.

  6. The Master said, "The rude tribes of the east and north have their princes, and are not like the States of our great land which are without them.

  7. The Master said, "Without the specious speech of the litanist T'o and the beauty of the prince Chao of Sung, it is difficult to escape in the present age.

  8. The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.

  1. Thus it may be known that the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people’s fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril.

  2. Mencius said, 'The mass of men wait for a king Wen, and then they will receive a rousing impulse. Scholars distinguished from the mass, without a king Wan, rouse themselves.'

  3. But when the army is restless and distrustful, trouble is sure to come from the other feudal princes. This is simply bringing anarchy into the army, and flinging victory away.

  4. Mencius said, 'The reason why the superior man was reduced to straits between Chen and Cai was because neither the princes of the time nor their ministers sympathized or communicated with him.'

  5. Mencius said, 'The precious things of a prince are three: the territory, the people, the government and its business. If one value as most precious pearls and jade, calamity is sure to befall him.'

  6. Therefore the skilful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.

  7. The officer Chu said to Mencius, 'Master, the king sent persons to spy out whether you were really different from other men.' Mencius said, 'How should I be different from other men? Yao and Shun were just the same as other men.'

  8. The Master said, "If a prince is able to govern his kingdom with the complaisance proper to the rules of propriety, what difficulty will he have? If he cannot govern it with that complaisance, what has he to do with the rules of propriety?

  9. Mencius said, 'Benevolence and righteousness were natural to Yao and Shun. Tang and Wu made them their own. The five chiefs of the princes feigned them. Having borrowed them long and not returned them, how could it be known they did not own them?'

  10. The Duke Ting asked how a prince should employ his ministers, and how ministers should serve their prince. Confucius replied, "A prince should employ his minister according to the rules of propriety; ministers should serve their prince with faithfulness.

Wikiquote quotations are available under CC BY-SA 4.0 (links on each author page); classics passages are public-domain translations.

Data: Wikiquote (English) (CC BY-SA 4.0); English Wikisource (Public domain texts; transcription CC BY-SA 4.0). Retrieved 2026-10-22.