Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness.

This saying is commonly attributed to Laozi (Lao Tzu), the semi-legendary figure associated with the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching), a foundational text of classical Daoism compiled in the late Zhou period (often dated roughly 4th–3rd century BCE, though the text’s formation is complex). The image of water is one of the Dao De Jing’s central teaching devices: water is yielding, low-placing, and seemingly weak, yet it shapes landscapes over time. In the Warring States intellectual milieu—marked by debates over governance, force, and moral cultivation—Daoist writers repeatedly used natural metaphors to argue that non-coercive action (wuwei) and softness can outlast hardness and aggression.

The quote contrasts apparent weakness with real efficacy. Water yields rather than resists, but precisely because it adapts, persists, and works patiently, it can wear down what seems immovable. As a Daoist principle, “softness overcoming hardness” suggests that flexibility, humility, and non-contention can be more powerful than force—whether in personal conduct, political rule, or spiritual practice. The emphasis is not on passivity but on an alternative mode of power: indirect, time-based, and aligned with natural processes. It also implies a critique of rigid certainty and violence: what is hard may dominate briefly, but what is supple endures and ultimately transforms.

“Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water, yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible nothing can surpass it.”
“Under heaven nothing is more soft and weak than water; yet nothing is better at attacking the hard and strong.”
“The soft overcomes the hard; the weak overcomes the strong.”