Stephen Mitchell

born 1943 · American poet, translator & anthologist

Stephen Mitchell is an American poet, translator, scholar and anthologist, born in Brooklyn in 1943, best known for versions of ancient texts that read as English poetry rather than as scholarship — the Tao Te Ching (HarperCollins, 1988), the Bhagavad Gita, Gilgamesh, the Book of Job and Rilke. His Tao Te Ching has reportedly sold over a million copies, which is why its phrasing, rather than any literal translation, is what most English speakers think Lao Tzu sounds like. It is also why lines he composed circulate under Lao Tzu’s name.

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“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner”

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