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Who really said it

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

Not Lao Tzu — a paraphrase of Stephen Mitchell, 1988 Stephen Mitchell born 1943 · American poet and translator — his Tao Te Ching appeared in 1988
Disputed In copyright

The sentence people quote is a loosened version of a line by a living American poet. Stephen Mitchell’s 1988 rendering ↗ of Tao Te Ching chapter 9 reads “Care about people’s approval / and you will be their prisoner.” That is Mitchell’s own formulation, not a translation of anything in the Chinese: James Legge’s standard 1891 translation ↗ of the same chapter has no approval and no prisoner in it — and neither word occurs anywhere in Legge’s text. Wikiquote files the line under Laozi/Misattributed ↗ for exactly this reason.

Last verified 26 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner” Not Lao Tzu — an anonymous paraphrase of Stephen Mitchell's line “Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner,” from his Tao Te Ching: A New English Version (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), chapter 9

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Lao Tzu. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Stephen Mitchell and HarperCollins, for the 1988 line this paraphrases). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Stephen Mitchell — American poet, translator & anthologist. Theme: "Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

What the line paraphrases
Tao Te Ching, chapter 9, rendered by Stephen Mitchell
Mitchell’s actual words
“Care about people’s approval / and you will be their prisoner.”
Published
HarperCollins, 1988 — an interpretive version, not a literal translation
In the Tao Te Ching itself
Nothing corresponding — see Legge’s 1891 translation below

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity. 1988

Chapter 9 in full, from Mitchell’s 1988 version ↗. Note what the popular quotation does to it: “people’s approval” becomes “what other people think,” and an “always” is added that Mitchell did not write. So the line in circulation is a paraphrase of a paraphrase — two removes from any Chinese original.

Public-domain translation, full text
Legge’s Tao Teh King at Project Gutenberg
Stephen Mitchell’s Tao Te Ching, chapter 9 (1988)

How we verified this

  • We read Mitchell’s chapter 9 ↗ directly. It ends: “Chase after money and security / and your heart will never unclench. / Care about people’s approval / and you will be their prisoner. / Do your work, then step back. / The only path to serenity.” The page states its own provenance: “The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Translated by Stephen Mitchell, 1988.”
  • Then we checked the Chinese text’s standard English. James Legge’s translation ↗ gives chapter 9 as: “It is better to leave a vessel unfilled, than to attempt to carry it when it is full… When gold and jade fill the hall, their possessor cannot keep them safe. When wealth and honours lead to arrogancy, this brings its evil on itself.” Mitchell’s bowl and knife are recognisable; his prisoner is not there.
  • The absence is total, not partial: the words “prisoner” and “approval” each occur zero times in the whole of Legge’s text ↗ — all eighty-one chapters. Anyone can repeat that search in a browser’s find box.
  • Wikiquote’s Laozi page ↗ reaches the same verdict independently, listing this wording among the Misattributed: it “appears in Stephen Mitchell’s rendering into English of Tao Te Ching chapter 9; but this is an interpretation of Mitchell’s which does not appear in the original text or other recognized English translations,” and notes it was “repeated without attribution” in a 2013 self-help book, Hide Your Goat.
In copyright

Three layers, and only the top one matters for reuse. The Tao Te Ching itself is ancient and long in the public domain; Legge’s 1891 translation ↗ is public domain too — but neither contains this line. The sentence people quote descends from Stephen Mitchell’s 1988 rendering, which is in copyright. The popular wording itself is an anonymous paraphrase with no identified author. quotle.info makes no public-domain claim for it.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

This is one of the most-shared “Lao Tzu” lines on the internet, and it is not in the Tao Te Ching. Two separate things went wrong on the way — the credit, and then the wording.

Lao Tzu Not his

The wording is absent from the Chinese text and from recognised English translations — Legge’s 1891 version ↗ contains neither “prisoner” nor “approval” anywhere in its eighty-one chapters. Wikiquote ↗ lists it as misattributed. He may also never have existed: Wikipedia ↗ notes that “some regard the traditional Laozi as largely or wholly legendary.”

Stephen Mitchell His line, his words

Mitchell’s 1988 chapter 9 ↗ reads “Care about people’s approval / and you will be their prisoner.” He is a poet and translator born in 1943 ↗, and his Tao Te Ching is openly a version rather than a literal translation — the interpretation is the point of it.

Nobody identified Paraphrase of a paraphrase

Even Mitchell did not write the sentence as it is usually quoted. “People’s approval” has become “what other people think,” and an “always” has been added. Wikiquote ↗ records it turning up “repeated without attribution” in a 2013 positive-thinking book, Hide Your Goat.

The honest credit: Stephen Mitchell, Tao Te Ching chapter 9 (1988) — and if you want his actual sentence, it is “Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner” ↗, three words shorter and rather better.

Context

Why it mattered

Mitchell’s Tao Te Ching is the reason this happens. It was never presented as a literal translation — it is a poet’s version, and reportedly a million-copy seller ↗, which makes it by far the most-read English “Lao Tzu” there has ever been. When a version that good sells that well, its sentences get quoted as the ancient text rather than as the modern poem they are.

That is the whole mechanism of this misattribution, and it is not unique to this line: a translator’s felicities become the sage’s. The give-away here is the vocabulary. “Approval” as a social currency, and imprisonment by it, is a twentieth-century psychological idea; Legge’s chapter 9 ↗ is talking about overfilled vessels, gold, jade and the danger of arrogance.

A translator’s felicities become the sage’s. That is how this line was born.

Read the full story

Compare the two chapter 9s side by side. Legge (1891) ↗: “It is better to leave a vessel unfilled, than to attempt to carry it when it is full. If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness… When wealth and honours lead to arrogancy, this brings its evil on itself. When the work is done, and one’s name is becoming distinguished, to withdraw into obscurity is the way of Heaven.” Mitchell (1988) ↗: the bowl, the knife, money and security, approval and prisoners, “Do your work, then step back.” The bones match. The prisoner is Mitchell’s.

None of which makes the sentiment un-Taoist — a reader who likes the line is not being foolish. But “Lao Tzu said it” and “a good modern poet said it about Lao Tzu’s subject” are different claims, and only one of them is true. The historical Laozi ↗ is himself uncertain enough — traditionally 6th century BC, sometimes dated to the 4th, possibly never a single person — that hanging a 1988 sentence on him is doubly a guess.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Freedom Character

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Laozi — Misattributed (Wikiquote)en.wikiquote.org

The anchor finding: this wording traced to Mitchell’s chapter 9, absent from the original and from recognised translations.
Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell (1988)web.archive.org

Mitchell’s version in full — read chapter 9 and compare it with the quote in circulation.
The Tao Teh King, trans. James Legge (1891)www.gutenberg.org

The standard public-domain English translation. Search it for “prisoner” or “approval”: nothing.
Stephen Mitchell (translator)en.wikipedia.org

The real author of the line: poet, translator and anthologist, born 1943; his Tao Te Ching was published by HarperCollins in 1988.
Laozien.wikipedia.org

On the figure himself — traditionally 6th century BC, sometimes 4th, and regarded by many scholars as largely legendary.

The author

About Stephen Mitchell

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.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The real source (Chicago)

Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), chap. 9 — where the line reads “Care about people’s approval / and you will be their prisoner.” The popular wording is a later paraphrase of Mitchell, by no identified hand.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner’?” Last verified 26 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/care-about-what-other-people-think-and-you-will-always-be/

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