Laozi — "To know yet to think that one does not know is the highest [attainment]. Not to …"
To know yet to think that one does not know is the highest [attainment]. Not to know yet to think that one knows is a disease.
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More from Laozi
"Seal the openings, shut the doors, and until your last day you will not be exhausted. Widen the openings, interfere, and until your last day you will not be safe."
"Knowledge is a treasure, but practice is the key to it."
"The more taboos and prohibitions there are in the world, the poorer the people will be."
"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power."
"Those who know do not talk. Those who talk do not know."
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
Genuine wisdom begins with recognizing the limits of your own understanding. Someone who holds real knowledge but stays humble enough to question it keeps learning and avoids error. The opposite mindset—mistaking half-knowledge for certainty—is treated as a sickness of the mind, because it shuts the door to growth, blinds you to mistakes, and leads confident action into disaster.
Relevance to Laozi
Laozi worked as an archivist in the Zhou royal court, surrounded by records yet famously reticent to claim mastery. Taoism he founded centers on wu-wei and humility before the ineffable Tao, insisting the sage empties the mind rather than fills it with doctrine. Calling false certainty a disease fits his suspicion of clever officials and scholars whose performed expertise, he believed, corrupted rulers and unsettled the natural order.
The era
Laozi lived during the late Zhou dynasty, a fracturing era sliding toward the Warring States period. Rival schools—Confucians, Legalists, Mohists—competed to sell kings doctrines promising stable rule, and court advisors projected total certainty to win patronage. Against that marketplace of loud expertise, prizing the admission of ignorance was a pointed rebuke, warning rulers that confident ideologues were precisely the men most likely to wreck a state.
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