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Who really said it

Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly

Spoken by Confucius c. 551 – c. 479 BC · Chinese philosopher and teacher
Verified Free to reuse

This is a real passage of the Analects — Book XIII (Tsze-lu), chapter XVII — where Confucius answers his disciple Tsze-hsia, newly made governor of Chu-fu, on how to govern. The memorable English wording is James Legge’s, from The Chinese Classics, Vol. I (London: Trübner & Co., 1861), and it is printed there in full.

Last verified 4 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly” Confucius, The Analects, book 13, chapter 17, translated by James Legge in The Chinese Classics, vol. 1 (London: Trübner & Co., 1861). The English wording "Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly" is Legge's. Quote sites that credit Wilson Mizner (1876–1933) are wrong: Legge printed the sentence in 1861. Verbatim: “Do not be desirous to have things done quickly; do not look at small advantages. Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly. Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished.”

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Provenance

The source

Work
The Analects, Book XIII (Tsze-lu), chapter XVII
Speaker
Confucius, answering his disciple Tsze-hsia (Zi Xia), newly governor of Chu-fu
Translation
James Legge, in The Chinese Classics, Vol. I (London: Trübner & Co., 1861; reprinted 1893)
Chinese
子夏為莫父宰，問政。子曰：「無欲速，無見小利。欲速，則不達；見小利，則大事不成。」

Tsze-hsia, being governor of Chu-fu, asked about government. The Master said, “Do not be desirous to have things done quickly; do not look at small advantages. Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly. Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished.” Analects, Book XIII, ch. XVII

Legge’s complete chapter XVII, as transcribed at Wikisource. The famous single sentence is the third of four; on its own it loses the fact that this was job advice to a specific new magistrate.

Scanned first edition
The Chinese Classics, Vol. I (1861) at the Internet Archive
Legge’s Analects, Book XIII, at Wikisource

How we traced it

Public domain

The Chinese original is more than two thousand years old and long out of copyright, and the English wording quoted here comes from James Legge’s translation first published in The Chinese Classics, Vol. I (London: Trübner & Co., 1861), with a second edition in 1893. Both printings are comfortably before 1931, so this specific translation is in the public domain in the United States — note that a modern rendering of the same passage by a living translator would not be.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

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

Where it goes wrong

The attribution to Confucius is sound — unusually so for a name this heavily counterfeited. What goes wrong with this quote is the opposite of the usual problem: two of the largest quote databases have taken a passage of the Analects and handed it to a 20th-century American wit.

Wilson Mizner (1876–1933) Quote databases

BrainyQuote ↗ and QuoteFancy ↗ both print the full Legge passage under Mizner’s name. Mizner was an American playwright and raconteur born in 1876 ↗; Legge’s English was already in print in the 1861 first edition of The Chinese Classics ↗. The dates alone settle it.

Confucius, as though he said it in these words Translation, not fabrication

The thought is his; the sentence is his translator’s. Confucius’s reply in Chinese is four characters, 欲速不達. The polished English is James Legge’s 1861 rendering — a modern rendering of the same passage ↗ gives “Be neither hasty nor partial! For haste makes waste, and partiality loses entirety.”

Confucius’s own pen Compiled after his death

Confucius wrote no collection of sayings. Wikipedia notes that his aphorisms “were compiled in the Analects, but not until many years after his death,” so every quotation from it is a report by disciples rather than an authored text. Confucius at Wikipedia ↗

Confucius said it, to a young magistrate named Tsze-hsia, in Book XIII, chapter XVII of the Analects ↗. The words you know it by are James Legge’s, published in 1861.

Context

Why it mattered

The advice was not a fridge magnet. Tsze-hsia (Zi Xia) had just been handed a town to run, and he asked his teacher what to do first. Confucius gave him two warnings rather than a programme: don’t rush, and don’t get distracted by small wins. In a system where a magistrate’s reputation was made or broken by visible results, both were counsel against the obvious career move.

The phrase became one of the most durable idioms in Chinese. A Taipei Times language column ↗ traces 欲速則不達 (yù sù zé bù dá) to this passage in the Zi Lu chapter, and notes it reappears in the Book of Han, completed in 111 AD, chapter 75. Its usual English equivalents are “more haste, less speed” and “haste makes waste.”

Do not be desirous to have things done quickly; do not look at small advantages.

How much of this sentence is Confucius, and how much is his translator?

Four Chinese characters carry the thought: 欲速不達 — roughly, want-fast, then not-arrive. Everything else in the famous English line is James Legge, a Victorian missionary-scholar working in Hong Kong, choosing a formal register that reads today like an aphorism carved into stone.

Other renderings look nothing like it. One modern version of 13.17 online ↗, which names no translator, compresses the whole exchange to “Be neither hasty nor partial! For haste makes waste, and partiality loses entirety.” Same passage, same meaning, entirely different sentence. That is why the specific string people search for belongs to Legge’s 1861 book even though the thought belongs to Confucius.

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

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

Legge’s Analects, Book XIIIen.wikisource.org

Transcription of James Legge’s Book XIII; chapter XVII contains the sentence verbatim.
Analects 13.17 with the Chinese originalctext.org

The Chinese Text Project’s Zi Lu chapter, section 17, pairing 子夏為莫父宰 with Legge’s English.
The Chinese Classics, Vol. I (1861)archive.org

Scan of Legge’s first edition, London: Trübner & Co., 1861 — the book the English wording first appeared in.
The Chinese Classics, Vol. 1, at Project Gutenbergarchive.org

Project Gutenberg’s e-text of Legge’s Confucian Analects, mirrored at the Internet Archive.
The passage credited to Wilson Miznerbrainyquote.com

BrainyQuote prints all four sentences of Analects 13.17 under the name of an American playwright who died in 1933.
The same misattribution, repeatedquotefancy.com

QuoteFancy carries the identical Legge text under Wilson Mizner’s byline.

The true author

About Confucius

Confucius

c. 551 – c. 479 BC · Chinese philosopher, teacher and political adviser

Confucius (Kụng Fūzạ) was a teacher and would-be statesman of the state of Lu who spent much of his life trying to persuade rulers to govern by moral example rather than coercion. He wrote no book of sayings himself: the Analects is a compilation of his remarks and conversations put together by disciples and later hands, and Wikipedia notes that these aphorisms were gathered “not until many years after his death.” The advice in this passage — don’t rush, don’t chase small gains — is characteristic of him: practical counsel given to a specific young official taking up a specific post.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Confucius. The Analects, book 13, chap. 17. In The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, and The Doctrine of the Mean, translated by James Legge. London: Trübner & Co., 1861.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/desire-to-have-things-done-quickly-prevents-their-being/

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