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Who really said it

Fan Ch'ih asked about benevolence. The Master said, 'It is to love all men.'

Written by Confucius (as translated by James Legge) Confucius (Kong Qiu) 551–479 BC · Chinese teacher & philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period
Verified Free to reuse

This is a genuine passage from the Analects, Book XII (“Yen Yuan”), chapter 22. The elegant English wording is James Legge’s translation ↗; Confucius’s own answer was just two characters — “愛人” (ai ren, “love people”).

Last verified 10 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Fan Ch'ih asked about benevolence. The Master said, 'It is to love all men.'” Confucius, The Analects XII.22 (trans. James Legge, 1861)

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Provenance

The source

Work
The Analects (Lun Yü), Book XII — “Yen Yuan”, ch. 22
Speaker
Confucius, replying to his disciple Fan Ch’ih (Fan Chi)
Original
樊遲問仁。子曰：愛人。 (“Fan Chi asked about ren; the Master said: love people.”)
Translation
James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1 (1861; rev. 1893)

Fan Ch’ih asked about benevolence. The Master said, “It is to love all men.” He asked about knowledge. The Master said, “It is to know all men.”

Analects 12.22, Legge’s translation. The saying pairs ren (benevolence) with zhi (knowledge): to love people, and to know them.

Read Analects 12.22 (Chinese + Legge) at the Chinese Text Project

How we verified this

Public domain

The English wording is James Legge’s translation, first published in The Chinese Classics, vol. 1 (1861) and revised in 1893 — both well before 1931, so this translation is in the public domain in the United States. The underlying Classical Chinese text is millennia old and long public domain.

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.

Fact-check

A genuine quote — with one wrinkle

The attribution to Confucius is correct: this is a real line from the Analects. The only thing worth flagging is that the memorable English belongs to the translator, not to Confucius.

James Legge, not Confucius verbatim translation, not fabrication

Confucius answered in two Classical Chinese characters — 愛人 (ai ren) ↗. The graceful “It is to love all men” is Legge’s 1861/1893 rendering ↗; other translators give “Love others” or “Love people.”

Detached from Fan Ch’ih

Online the line is usually clipped to a bare “Love all men” aphorism, stripped of the question-and-answer setting with the disciple Fan Ch’ih and its companion line about knowledge (“to know all men”).

It really is Confucius — Analects 12.22 ↗ — but the polished English is James Legge’s Victorian translation of a two-character reply.

Context

Why it mattered

The exchange is one of the most cited definitions of ren (benevolence, humaneness) in the whole Confucian canon. Asked point-blank what the supreme virtue means, Confucius does not offer a doctrine — he offers a verb: love people.

The passage then pairs benevolence with knowledge (“to know all men”) and a piece of practical governance — raise up the upright over the crooked, and even the crooked can be straightened — grounding the ideal of love in the concrete work of judging and leading people well.

It is to love all men.

Explore

Filed under

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

Love Wisdom

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.

Analects 12.22 — Chinese text & Legge translationctext.org

The primary passage side-by-side in Classical Chinese and Legge’s English.
The Chinese Classics, Vol. 1: Confucian Analects (Legge)en.wikisource.org

Full text of Legge’s public-domain translation, the source of this wording.
The Analects, Book 12 (Legge)monadnock.net

Clean reading copy of Book XII including the Fan Ch’ih passage.
James Legge (biography)en.wikipedia.org

The Scottish sinologist whose 1861/1893 translation produced this English.
Confuciusen.wikipedia.org

Life and thought of the teacher to whom the saying is correctly attributed.

The true author

About Confucius

Confucius (Kong Qiu)

551–479 BC · Chinese teacher, editor & philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period

Confucius (Kong Qiu; also Kongzi, “Master Kong”) was a teacher and thinker of the state of Lu whose ideas on virtue, ritual, and benevolent conduct became the foundation of the Confucian tradition. His teachings survive chiefly in the Analects (Lunyu), a collection of sayings and dialogues compiled by his disciples after his death. Here his disciple Fan Ch’ih asks the meaning of ren — benevolence or humaneness — and Confucius answers with the terse core of his ethics: ai ren, love people.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Confucius, The Analects (Lun Yü), Book XII (“Yen Yuan”), ch. 22, trans. James Legge, in The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893).

MLA (9th ed.)

Confucius. The Analects. Translated by James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, rev. ed., Clarendon Press, 1893, bk. 12, ch. 22.

APA (7th ed.)

Confucius. (1893). The analects (J. Legge, Trans.). In The Chinese classics (Vol. 1, Rev. ed.). Clarendon Press. (Original work published 1861)

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