Laozi — "When the great Tao is abandoned, there is humanity and righteousness. When wisdo…"
When the great Tao is abandoned, there is humanity and righteousness. When wisdom and intelligence appear, there is great hypocrisy.
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More from Laozi
"Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone."
"Therefore the sage manages affairs without doing anything, and conveys his instructions without the use of speech."
"The Tao never does anything, yet through it all things are done."
"The best of men is like water. Water benefits all things and does not compete with them. It dwells in lowly places that all disdain. This is why it is so near to the Tao."
"The highest virtue does nothing. Yet, nothing needs to be done. The lowest virtue does everything. Yet, much remains to be done."
About Laozi (c. 6th century BCE (semi-legendary))
Reputed founder of Taoism and author of the Tao Te Ching, whose wu wei (effortless action) shaped East Asian philosophy. Closely associated with Zhuangzi (later Taoist who extended Laozi's framework). For an intellectual contrast, see Confucius, near-contemporary Chinese sage of social ritual and duty — Confucius systematized social order through ritual and hierarchy; Laozi argued that all such systems were the disease, not the cure — the two founding poles of Chinese moral philosophy.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
When people lose their natural, spontaneous connection to the underlying order of things, they start needing codified rules about kindness and fairness to fill the gap. The very existence of loud moral preaching signals that genuine goodness has already faded. Likewise, when cleverness and showy intellect rise to prominence, deception follows closely behind, because sharp minds learn to manipulate appearances. Virtue talked about constantly is virtue no longer lived.
Relevance to Laozi
Laozi was a reclusive archivist in the Zhou court who reportedly grew disillusioned with the empty ceremony and scholarly posturing he witnessed in government. Before leaving civilization westward on a water buffalo, he supposedly distilled his thinking into the Dao De Jing. This verse captures his signature move: distrust of performative virtue, preference for wu wei (effortless action), and belief that naming and codifying things corrupts them.
The era
Laozi lived during the late Zhou dynasty, an age of collapsing feudal order and near-constant warfare between rival states. Competing philosophical schools, especially Confucians, pushed elaborate ritual, hierarchy, and codified ethics as the cure for social chaos. Laozi's counterpunch argued the opposite: that loudly prescribed morality was itself a symptom of decay, and that scheming court intellectuals were making things worse, not better, through their clever interventions.
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