Q0151

Xunzi

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Without accumulating small steps, one cannot reach a thousand li; without accumulating small streams, one cannot form rivers and seas.
Thinker Xunzi
School Confucianism
Source Xunzi, Exhortation to Learning
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Xunzi, Exhortation to Learning, within the tradition of Confucianism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Xunzi's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Xunzi. (n.d.). Without accumulating small steps, one cannot reach a thousand li; without accumulating small streams, one cannot form rivers and seas. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0151

MLA: Xunzi. “Without accumulating small steps, one cannot reach a….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0151.

Chicago: Xunzi. “Without accumulating small steps, one cannot reach a….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0151.

Same thinker

More from Xunzi

  1. Indigo is taken from the indigo plant, yet is bluer than the plant; ice is made of water, yet is colder than water.
  2. Learning must never stop.
  3. Human nature is bad; whatever is good about it is the product of deliberate activity (wei).
  4. The trouble with people is that they are blinkered by one corner and obscure the greater pattern.
  5. Seeing the good, be earnest to preserve it in yourself; seeing the not-good, be anxious to examine yourself.

All quotations by Xunzi

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme