"Thirty spokes are joined in the wheel's..." - Quote by Lao Tzu
Thirty spokes are joined in the wheel's hub. The hole in the middle makes it useful.
More by Lao Tzu
“A good athlete can enter a state of body-awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious will. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most effective form of action. The game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; we can't tell the dancer from the dance. It happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior intelligence of the body.”
“A multitude of words is tiresome, unlike remaining centered.”
“People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.”
More on Emptiness
“Cut out doors and windows for the house. The holes make it useful.”
“Voidness is that which stands right in the middle between this and that.”
“Thirty spokes meet in the hub,but the empty space between themis the essence of the wheel.Pots are formed from clay,but the empty space within itis the essence of the pot.Walls with windows and doorsform the house,but the empty space within itis the essence of the home.”
More on Utility
“The value comes from what is there, but the use comes from what is not there.”
“It must be confessed that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms.”
“A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.”