Top 29 Quotes by Zhang Zhidong

Although China is not so wealthy and powerful as the West, her people of whatever condition - rich or poor, high or low - all enjoy a perfect freedom and a happy life. Not so all the inhabitants of Western lands.

People who have got to know Western educational methods always claim that the reading of the Classics was a useless waste of time and should be abolished. Such chatter is to be heard from hundreds of people and cannot be stopped. But it is a serious mistake.

Sincerity is the norm of Heaven and the law of our nature. China and the West agree on this point, for without sincerity, no human prince could ever found a state, and no earthly teacher could ever establish a religion.

If, by one determined purpose, the hearts of all the graduates, the officials, and the men of China were united, our country would rest upon a great rock, and we could defy the world to overthrow us. To attain this object, it is necessary first that every man should fulfill his duty to his parents and elders. The country would then be at peace.

There never yet has been a country which became powerful without knowledge. A man by his own strength alone cannot successfully combat a tiger, but by his intelligence, he can devise means to entrap him.

Without knowing about flexibility, one cannot work out strategies to deal with the enemy and prepare for changes, and without knowing about the foundation of one's own culture, one would be contemptuous of the Confucian ethical codes.