- Lived:
- c. 369–286 BCE · Meng, in the small state of Song (near today's Henan–Anhui border), Warring States China
- Tradition:
- Classical Chinese; Daoism — its skeptical, laughing, story-telling wing
- The Big Idea:
- Every judgment you make — big, small, useful, useless, even me and not-me — is made from somewhere, one perspective among countless others; see that clearly, and you can loosen your grip on your certainties and move through a changing world with the ease of a fish in water.
- In their words:
- "Go away. I'll drag my tail in the mud."
- If you remember one thing:
- He is the funniest great philosopher who ever lived — and his jokes are load-bearing. The butterfly dream, the useless tree, the cook whose blade never dulls: each story is an argument you can't quite pin down and can't ever forget.