The sun exactly at noon is exactly [beginning to] go down. And a creature when he is born is exactly [beginning to] die.

Life and human society are the chief concern of Confucianism and, through it, the chief concern of the Chinese people.

It is true that the Chinese are not so religious as the Hindus, or even as the Japanese; and they are certainly not so religious as the Christian missionaries desire them to be.

Even the absolute universality of the law of causality does not necessarily limit a person's freedom, because the law of causality not only enables him to explain the past and predict the future, but also encourages him to use his intelligence to create new causes and attain new results.

The Chinese people, too, went through all kinds of vicissitudes in their religious development.

Confucius was a humanist and an agnostic.

Whenever you do something without asking yourself, "Why am I doing this?"-that is meaningless life... . The "why" of life makes it meaningful... . Only when an answer is given is one living life as a man.