Confucius Quotes

When people are temperate in their behavior, in their lives, someone who is addictive or extreme or obsessive can't understand how people can just go through their lives in the middle, and people who are rational and balanced can't understand the opposite. I'm one who's in the extreme camp in almost every area of my life and I always have been. I've observed that I'm in a minority, but I never understand people who are measured.

Passivity is fatal to us.

If both factions, or neither, shall abuse you, you will maybe be about right. Beware of being assailed by one and praised by the other.

There should be balance in all our actions; to be either extreme or lukewarm is equally bad.

Everything is give and take. The solutions are in the middle not in the extremity of the situation.

A leader is the one who speaks last and acts first.

There is moderation in everything.

Successful leaders have the courage to take action while others hesitate.

I shall ever repeat it, that mankind are governed not by extremes, but by principals of moderation.

You don’t know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling? A happy medium is something I wonder if you’ll ever learn.

Exceed due measure, and the most delightful things become the least delightful.

Moderation in all things is best, but it's pretty hard to get excited about it.

I really have always thought of myself as somebody who lives in the middle of the wheel and is able to go to the extreme, to the outside of the wheel in any direction. The best case scenario for me is to be able to be centered and then go out.

The nice sense of measure is certainly not one of Nature's gifts to her English children ... we have all of us yielded to infatuation at some moment of our lives.

I listen to the far left which informs the far right. Somewhere in the middle is where we end up.

I may be accused or rashness, but not sluggishness.

Potency does not mean being unnecessarily aggressive; one has to be wise.

Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism. The best of both worlds.

I'm not a debater. I get things done.

So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind; Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily; Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness; Sometimes one is up and sometimes down. Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency.

Just as a waterfall grows slower and more lightly suspended as it plunges down, so the great man of action tends to act with greater calmness than his tempestuous desires prior to the deed would lead one to expect.

Mere human beings cant afford to be fanatical about anything. Not even about justice or loyalty. The fanatic for justice ends by murdering a million helpless people to clear a space for his law-courts. If we are to survive on this planet, there must be compromises.

Abraham Lincoln was not all brooding and melancholy and patient understanding. There was a hard core in him, and plenty of toughness. He could recognize a revolutionary situation when he saw one, and he could act fast and ruthlessly to meet it.

Do not spend in excess like one who is careless of what is good, nor be miserly; the mean is best in every case.

I tend to be what I would call more progressive than conservative, but I think either extreme is excessive.