Over the past few years, I have looked at some pretty bad fake Confucius quotes. In my blog series, my goal is to expose fake Confucius quotes floating around on the internet in a fun and (somewhat) academic manner. The hope is that someone will find honest Confucius information while maybe finding a little wisdom in the process.
Today, I may have found the dumbest fake Confucius quotes, in fact, it's so bad, even dumb people could figure out these are fake quotes.
These fake quotes come courtesy of a page entitled "100 Confucius Quotes" from "quoteambition.com"
“Anyone can find the switch after the lights are on.” - Confucius
I suppose you have already found the problem with this one, but just in case you're reading this before you've had your morning coffee, Confucius pre-dates electricity by a couple of thousand years.
At this point, it might be cliche, but I find this quote to be another stupid proverb.
The "proverb" implies anyone can find something or learn something when it's obvious, which, is on the nose but, technically, correct. However, if we take this proverb literally, the corollary would be "not many can find the switch after the lights are out"; which is objectively false. While it can be a pain to find a switch in the dark in a new place, switches are pretty easy to find. Even in a completely dark room, any bozo in a few seconds could find the light switch.
The quote echoes other proverbial sayings like "every dog has his day"; which I find is a much better quote and definitely more insulting to the subject of your ire.
Confucius wasn't interested in pointing out obvious zingers to feel better about himself. In fact, on further inspection, the purpose of the proverb is to be used in the form of an insult rather than giving advice or a nugget of wisdom. Confucius might find the person who would employ it, shameful.
This comes from 5:25 (as always, from AC Muller's translation).
"The Master said: “Clever words, a pretentious face, and too-perfect courtesy... I am...ashamed of them. Concealing one's resentments and acting friendly to people Zuo Qiuming was ashamed to act this way and so am I. "
Fake Quote # 2 - “Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.” - Confucius
I don't even know where to start on this. In my humble opinion (which I suppose isn't all that humble), this might be an even dumber quote than the first one.
I can see the connection of the art of sword fighting in the movies and dancing but in an actual battle?. It probably comes down to raw strength, speed, and of course, skill and has little to nothing to do with finesse and or musical rhythm.
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| It's true Wesley was a great dancer though. |
Besides the aphorism just being plain stupid we can dismiss this quote from actually being from Confucius as Confucius didn't address soldiers or warfare much at all. In a quick glance at the Analects, there are no mentions of soldiers, swords or, yes, even dancing.
Although, according to Wikipedia, there was quite a sword dance during the Han Dynasty,
"In one account, a sword dance was said to have been performed by Xiang Zhuang at a banquet in an attempt to assassinate Liu Bang (the founder of the Han dynasty)...This event forms the basis of the "Gong Mo" Dance (公莫舞) – "Gong Mo", literally "Sir, Don't!", which describes the blocking actions by Xiang Bo during the sword dance to prevent Xiang Zhuang from thrusting his sword towards Liu Bang."
For those of you worried, I checked their source on the story, it seems legit.
Anyway, I gotta back out of these internet rabbit holes...
The closest approximations (and this is going to be a stretch) are the only quotes that I can find that relate to war or soldiers.
The first is from 7:13 and the next from 13:29-30:
"The things with which the Master was cautious, were fasting, war and sickness."
"The Master said: “Only when good men have instructed the people for seven years, may they take up arms. To lead untrained people into battle is the same as throwing them away.”
These quotes show a clear contrast in terms of tone between the fake quote and the actual material from the Analects. While Confucius could make biting, almost sarcastic remarks, I can't recall anything that has such a silly or flippant tone to it. So, I don't think there are any Analects that would even parallel the proverb,.
Upon reflection, I wondered, could there even be something in this quote that is halfway related to Sun Tzu's The Art of War?
And the answer is no. I checked that just in case.
The closest thing I could find there was from chapter VI, in verse 31.
"Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing."
There's no relation at all but I liked the quote.
So, two more fake Confucius quotes taken down, only a few hundred to go.
Thank you for all these posts. I also get peeved by these false quotes. It seems people are ok with spreading mostly false information and don't care to think if they said it or not. So many of them are obviously false too. I'm reading Han dynasty philosophy and luckily they aren't quoted so much so it gets better on that front at least after initial state of Analects and Dao De Jing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading. I think there's two things going on, one of which is just "click and share" internet culture/habits. The other aspect is the the "orientalism" and "exotic" nature of quoting from Confucius (or often Buddha) that helps the quote seem better than it actually is.
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