Q0368

Zhu Xi

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Not leaning is called the Mean; not changing is called Constancy. The Mean is the right Way of the world; Constancy is its settled principle.
Thinker Zhu Xi
School Neo-Confucianism
Source Commentary on the Doctrine of the Mean
Theme Meaning
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Commentary on the Doctrine of the Mean, within the tradition of Neo-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 meaning, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Zhu Xi'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: Zhu Xi. (n.d.). Not leaning is called the Mean; not changing is called Constancy. The Mean is the right Way of the world; Constancy is its settled principle. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0368

MLA: Zhu Xi. “Not leaning is called the Mean; not changing….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0368.

Chicago: Zhu Xi. “Not leaning is called the Mean; not changing….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0368.

Same thinker

More from Zhu Xi

  1. I ask the channel how it can be so clear — because fresh water keeps flowing from its source.
  2. The clearer the knowing, the more earnest the practice; the more earnest the practice, the clearer the knowing.
  3. To extend knowledge lies in investigating things: if one wishes to extend one's knowledge, one must approach things and exhaust their principle.

All quotations by Zhu Xi

Same theme

More on meaning

  1. Virtue is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us.
  2. There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.
  3. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
  4. Those who have a 'why' to live can bear with almost any 'how'.
  5. We feel that even if all possible scientific questions are answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

Browse the meaning theme