Q0287

Xunzi

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

The trouble with people is that they are blinkered by one corner and obscure the greater pattern.
Thinker Xunzi
School Confucianism
Source Xunzi, Dispelling Blindness
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Xunzi, Dispelling Blindness, 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.). The trouble with people is that they are blinkered by one corner and obscure the greater pattern. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0287

MLA: Xunzi. “The trouble with people is that they are….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0287.

Chicago: Xunzi. “The trouble with people is that they are….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0287.

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. Human nature is bad; whatever is good about it is the product of deliberate activity (wei).
  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