Quotes from Shang Yang

When the people are weak, the state is strong; hence the state that possesses the Way devotes itself to weakening the people.

Human beings have likes and dislikes; hence, the people can be ruled. The ruler must investigate likes and dislikes. Likes and dislikes are the root of rewards and penalties. The disposition of the people is to like ranks and emoluments and to dislike punishments and penalties. The ruler sets up the two in order to guide the people's will and to establish whatever he desires.

The means whereby the sovereign encourages the people are offices and ranks; the means by which the state prospers are agriculture and warfare. Today the people seek offices and ranks, yet they are attainable not through agriculture and warfare but through crafty words and empty ways: this is called to exhaust the people.

What the world calls a "worthy" is one who is defined as upright; but those who define him as good and upright are his clique (dang ?). When you hear his words, you consider him able; when you ask his partisans, they approve it. Hence, one is ennobled before one has any merits; one is punished before one has committed a crime.

Nowadays, [the ruler] relies on many officials and numerous clerks; to monitor them he establishes assistants and supervisors. Assistants are installed and supervisors are established to prohibit [officials] from pursuing [personal] profit; yet assistants and supervisors also seek profit, so how they will able to prohibit each other?

When one thousand people are engaged in agriculture and warfare, yet there is a single man among them engaged in Poems, Documents, argumentativeness and cleverness, then one thousand people all will become remiss in agriculture and warfare. … This is the teaching that impoverishes the state and weakens the army.

Wherever the name (repute) and benefit meet, the people will go in this direction.… Farming is what the people consider bitter; war is what the people consider dangerous. Yet they brave what they consider bitter and perform what they consider dangerous because of the calculation [of a name and benefit]. … When benefits come from land, the people exhaust their strength; when the name comes from war, the people are ready to die.

When the affairs of the world change, one should implement a different Way. … Therefore, it is said: "When the people are ignorant, one can become monarch through knowledge; when the generation is knowledgeable, one can become monarch through force".