Knowing is the beginning of action; action is the completion of knowing.
知是行之始、行是知之成。
Philosophers
Wang Yangming
Born in 1472 in Zhejiang during China's Ming dynasty, Wang Yangming was a Confucian scholar and military strategist. He overturned the orthodox Neo-Confucian doctrine of 'first knowledge, then action' with his thesis that knowledge and action are inseparable — the 'unity of knowing and acting.' His school of thought, Yangming studies, influenced Japanese reformers from Oshio Heihachiro to Yoshida Shoin.
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Wang Yangming's Other Quotes
To know and not to act is not yet to know.
The mind itself is principle.
It is easy to vanquish bandits in the mountains; it is hard to vanquish the bandits in one's heart.
This mind is luminous — what more is there to say?
The way of the sage is sufficient in my own nature. It was an error to seek principle in external things.
Related Quotes
For thinking and Being are the same.
-- Parmenides
You must learn all things: both the steadfast heart of well-rounded Truth and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true trust.
-- Parmenides
Virtue lies in the middle.
-- Aristotle
Imagine prisoners chained underground since childhood, seeing only shadows on a wall and taking them for reality.
-- Plato
I know that I know nothing.
-- Socrates
Just as medicine is useless if it does not drive out bodily disease, so philosophy is useless if it does not drive out suffering of the soul.
-- Epicurus