K'ang Yu-wei
K'ang Yu-wei (1858-1927) was a Chinese reformer and political philosopher. He was the leader of reform movement of late Ch'ing dynasty. His famous book is Ta T'un Shu (Book of Great Unity).Wisdom & Quotes
- I was born on this earth, so I come from the same womb as humans in all countries, even though our body types may be different. ... I have drunk deeply of the intellectual heritage of ancient India, Greece, Persia, and Rome, and of modern England, France, Germany, and America. I have pillowed my head upon them, and my soul in dreams has fathomed them. ... It is as if we were all parts of an electrical force which inter-connects all things, or partook of the pure essence that encompasses all things.
- Those who advocate the theory of competition understand nature but do not understand man.
- Our whole world is nothing but a world of grief and misery, and its inhabitants are nothing but grieving and miserable people. The living beings on this earth are all destined for slaughter. The azure heaven and the round earth are no more than a great slaughter-yard, a great prison.
- If we bring about that women seek to gain the rights of independence, to increase their sphere of responsibilities, and to incline toward studies, then human abilities will increase daily.
- The mind that cannot bear to see the suffering of others is humanity. It is electricity; it is ether. Everyone has it. This is why it is said that the nature of all men is originally good.
- Everyone who leads large masses of people and is excessively idolized by them must be vigorously opposed, however enlightened or holy he may be, irrespective of his office or profession.
- Eliminate your consciousness and listen to the sound of music in all the skies.
It is thus that people have been moved for thousands of years to produce mysterious sounds.
- Our nation is founded upon people - if we cannot think how to foster those people, then we ourselves destroy our own foundation.
- Do I not have a self? If not, how do I have knowledge or affection? Since I have a self, can that which penetrates my body as well as the material force of heaven, thy physical substance of earth, and the breath of man be cut off or not? If it can be, then one can draw a knife and cut water to pieces.
- Being that I am a man, I would be uncompassionate to flee from men, and not to share their griefs and miseries. …Being that I was born on the earth, then mankind in the ten thousand countries of the earth are all my brothers (literally, of the same womb) of different bodily types. Being that I have knowledge of them, then I have love (ch'in) for them.
- Our sun is but one star floating
Like a grain of sand in the Ganges,
Huge white stars with
Temperatures of myriad degrees,
Endlessly distant, are still its
Neighbours.
They help me onward with their
Dazzling light
As I roam afar and loudly sing.
- Kang Nahai zhutian jiang, based on Hasian Kung-Chuan, 'K'ang Yu-Wei's Excursion into Science'
- Men have callously and unscrupulously repressed women, restrained them, deceived them, shut them up, imprisoned them, and bound them. ... And yet ... those whom we call good men, righteous men, have been accustomed to the sight of such things, have sat and looked and considered them to be matters of course.
Luis Munoz Rivera