Q0286

Xunzi

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Human nature is bad; whatever is good about it is the product of deliberate activity (wei).
Thinker Xunzi
School Confucianism
Source Xunzi, Human Nature Is Bad
Theme Human Nature
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Xunzi, Human Nature Is Bad, 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 human nature, 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.). Human nature is bad; whatever is good about it is the product of deliberate activity (wei). In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0286

MLA: Xunzi. “Human nature is bad; whatever is good about….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0286.

Chicago: Xunzi. “Human nature is bad; whatever is good about….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0286.

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. Without accumulating small steps, one cannot reach a thousand li; without accumulating small streams, one cannot form rivers and seas.
  3. Learning must never stop.
  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 human nature

  1. Man is by nature a political animal.
  2. Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed.
  3. [In the state of nature, the life of man is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
  4. The heart of compassion is possessed by all; so too the hearts of shame, of respect, and of right and wrong.
  5. That whereby humans differ from birds and beasts is slight; ordinary people discard it, the noble person preserves it.

Browse the human nature theme