Lao Tzu Quotes

You can't have something without nothing.

Could you understand the meaning of light if there were no darkness to point the contrast? Day and night, life and death, love and hatred, since none of these things can have any being at all apart from the existence of the other, you can no more separate them than you can separate the two sides of a coin.

Good men are bad men's instructors, And bad men are good men's materials.

Nothing exists without its opposite.

An increase in light gives an increase in darkness.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

To know one thing, you must know the opposite.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

Listen, the obvious thing to remember is without dark, there is no light, and without light, there is no dark.

You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.

Duality is not a story. Duality is just a complexity.

Shadow owes its birth to light.

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.

When I'm good I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.

A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil.

I've realised darkness and light are inter-dependent, just as death is an enhancer of life.

I'm fascinated by the yin and yang of everything.

Black implies white self implies other

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. Therefore having and not having arise together. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short contrast each other. High and low rest upon each other. Voice and sound harmonize each other. Front and back follow one another.

I'm drawn between the light and dark.

It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness ... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself ... both and one. A shadow on snow.

There is no Jesus without Judas, no Martin Luther King, Jr., without the Klan; no Ali without Joe Frazier; no freedom without tyranny. No wisdom exists that does not include perspective. Relativity is the greatest gift.

You can't have good without evil, pleasure without pain, and so on.

There could be no justice, unless there were also injustice; no courage, unless there were cowardice; no truth, unless there were falsehood.

What is a good man? A teacher of a bad man. What is a bad man? A good man's charge?