Chinese Taoist philosopher (c. 369–286 BC)
A philosopher who wrote parables so strange they still unsettle: dreams where you can't tell if you're a man who dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming it's a man.
Zhuang Zhou lived in 4th century BCE China, during the Warring States period — an era when a hundred competing schools of thought fought for attention. He wrote or co-wrote the Zhuangzi, a text that became one of Taoism's two founding works alongside the Tao Te Ching. Where other philosophers of his time built systems, he built riddles. The work carries his name and his method: thought experiments that dissolve the border between self and world, waking and sleep.
Sourced, dated quotes from Zhuang Zhou
The great bird rises on the wind to a height of a thousand miles. What does it see from on high there in the blue? Is it droves of wild horses galloping?
Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.
We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
Whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Hsi-shih, things ribald and shady or things grotesque and strange, the Way makes them all into one.
How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home?
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