- Lived:
- 551–479 BCE · state of Lu, in modern Shandong province, China
- Tradition:
- Classical Chinese; founder of Confucianism — the ethics of virtue, ritual, and social harmony
- The Big Idea:
- A good society isn't built by force or law but by cultivated people — and anyone, whatever their birth, can become one through learning, ritual, and humaneness.
- In their words:
- "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."
- If you remember one thing:
- He died believing he had failed — and went on to shape more human lives, for more centuries, than perhaps any thinker who ever lived.