Top 18 Confucian Quotes & Sayings

What makes Samsung so mysterious is that it's not altogether clear who leads the company or what its leaders do. The company follows an avowedly Confucian model of consensus-driven decision-making, values bone-crushingly hard work, and shows tremendous deference to the founding Lee family, despite its lack of a controlling interest in its shares.

In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth. Someone once told me, "Even when building the imperial palace, they always leave one place unfinished." In both Buddhist and Confucian writings of the philosophers of former times, there are also many missing chapters.

My children were educated in what were then Chinese schools, and they learned English as a subject. But they made up when they went to English-language universities. So they didn't lose out. They had a basic set of traditional Confucian values. Not my grandchildren.

The original communitarianism of Chinese Confucian society has degenerated into nepotism, a system of family linkages, and corruption, on the mainland. And remnants of the evils of the original system are still found in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even Singapore.

In the Confucian tradition is a simple formula that appeals to me deeply: 'If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character. If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home. If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.' I urge everyone to reflect deeply on these words, as simple as they are profound.

Self-respect, the value of 'face,' is universal but is most pronounced in China, then in Japan where the Confucian ethic is most influential.

That's a mistake I think that a lot of Western observers make is to assume that Korean nationalism is hundreds if not thousands of years old. When in fact nationalism is incompatible with Korean Confucian tradition.

I consider myself a Hindu, Christian, Moslem, Jew, Buddhist and Confucian.

Traditional Chinese art looked at the Earth from a Confucian mountain top; Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature through the window or door-frame of a palace. For the Cro-Magnons, space is a metaphysical arena of continually intermittent appearances and disappearances.

The Confucian concept and Chinese ideograms for 'woman' and for 'slave' are the same.

I have always thought that humanity was animal-like. The Confucian theory was man could be improved, but I'm not sure he can be. He can be trained; he can be disciplined.

Take the serious side of Disney, the Confucian side of Disney. It's in having taken an ethoswhere you have the values of courage and tenderness asserted in a way that everybody can understand. You have got an absolute genius there. You have got a greater correlation of nature than you have had since the time of Alexander the Great.

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.

In order to defend the Chinese race, one must first defend the Confucian culture; and in order to defend the Confucian culture, one must first defend the State. This is because what preserves the race relies upon intelligence, which is in turn nurtured by Confucian education.

In the early 2000s, people expected that anonymity on the Internet would be positive for the development of democracy in South Korea. In a Confucian culture like South Korea's, hierarchy can block the free exchange of opinions in face-to-face situations. The web offered a way around that.

John D. Rockefeller said that he found friendships based on business to be far more long lasting and profitable than the reverse. I think there's something to that. A company can end up being very Confucian, where the good of the individual is subjugated to the good of the whole.

Taoist chanting, Confucian chanting, Christian chanting, Buddhist chanting don't matter. Chanting Coca Cola, Coca Cola, Coca Cola … can be just as good if you keep a clear mind. But if you don't keep a clear mind, and are only following your thinking as you mouth the words, even the Buddha cannot help you.

A Confucian or Jewish love of learning would gain minorities far more than any affirmative action laws we might pass.