Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be

Not Lao Tzu — actually John Heider John Heider 1936–2010 · American clinical psychologist & Human Potential Movement teacher
Disputed In copyright

The sentence is John Heider’s, from The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age (Humanics New Age, 1985) — a book whose own subtitle calls it an adaptation, not a translation. Taoism author Stefan Stenudd traces this line and its companion sentence to page 43 of Heider’s book ↗, very loosely spun from the opening lines of Tao Te Ching chapter 22. Standard translations of that chapter say nothing resembling it.

Last verified 27 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be” When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. — John Heider, The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age (Humanics New Age, 1985). Widely misattributed to Lao Tzu; the line is Heider's own free adaptation of Tao Te Ching chapter 22, not a translation of it.

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 The estate of John Heider and his publishers (Humanics New Age, 1985; later editions from Green Dragon Books)). 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 John Heider — American clinical psychologist & Human Potential Movement teacher. Theme: "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be". 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 "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be". 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

Work
The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age
Written by
John Heider (1936–2010)
First published
Humanics New Age, Atlanta, 1985
Translation
None — Heider’s own free adaptation, not a rendering of the Chinese; his section 22 answers to Tao Te Ching chapter 22

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.

By yielding, I endure.

When I give of myself, I become more. Short excerpt

These are Heider’s own sentences, verified verbatim in a circulated PDF of excerpts from the book ↗. A blog transcript of the passage places it under the heading “The paradox of letting go” ↗.

The Tao of Leadership (Humanics New Age, 1985) at the Internet Archive

How we verified this

  • Tao Te Ching chapter 22 does not contain this thought. The public-domain James Legge translation at Project Gutenberg ↗ opens the chapter “The partial becomes complete; the crooked, straight; the empty, full; the worn out, new” — about actions and states, not about becoming a different self.
  • Stefan Stenudd, who has published his own Tao Te Ching translation and commentary, devotes a page to this exact line ↗: he states plainly that it is not from the Tao Te Ching, names John Heider’s The Tao of Leadership (1985) as the source of both sentences, and cites page 43.
  • The wording is confirmable in the book itself: “Principles of Leadership: Excerpts from The Tao of Leadership” ↗ reproduces the passage verbatim, followed by “By yielding, I endure.”
  • The line is absent from the curated attribution record: Wikiquote’s Laozi page ↗ lists this sentence neither among his sourced quotations nor among the items it flags as misattributed.
In copyright

The idea reaches back to a text long in the public domain, but this wording does not. It was first published in 1985 by Humanics New Age ↗ as John Heider’s original composition, so it is a modern, in-copyright text and is quoted here only in brief. Public-domain translations of Tao Te Ching chapter 22, such as James Legge’s, are freely reusable — but they do not contain this sentence.

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.

Know a source that supports or challenges this? Add a link →

Paste a URL and we’ll check it. This doesn’t change the page — it goes to our review queue, and if it holds up we update the record with a citation.

Fact-check

How it became a Lao Tzu quote

Heider’s book puts “Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching” on the cover and his own prose inside. Once the sentences were lifted off the page, the cover won: quote sites credit the ancient sage, or the ancient book, and drop the modern author entirely.

Lao Tzu Not in the Tao Te Ching

Stefan Stenudd’s Fake Lao Tzu Quotes ↗ states outright that this is not a quote from the Tao Te Ching, and argues the sentiment cuts against Lao Tzu, for whom “what I might be” would be precisely the illusion to drop. Goodreads nonetheless carries it under Lao Tzu’s name ↗, unsourced.

The Tao Te Ching itself Book, not person

The two-sentence version circulates with the book as the “author”: Goodreads files “When I let go of what I am… When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need” under ‘Tao Te Ching’ ↗, with no chapter, edition or translator, and notes that community-added quotes are not verified.

Tao Te Ching, chapter 22 Loose adaptation

Heider’s section 22 answers to chapter 22, but that chapter is about yielding and wear, not self-reinvention: Legge’s public-domain translation opens “The partial becomes complete; the crooked, straight; the empty, full; the worn out, new” ↗.

The thought is Taoism-flavoured; the sentence is not Taoist scripture. It was written in English by an American psychologist and first published in 1985 ↗.

Context

Adaptation, not translation

The Tao of Leadership never pretended to be a translation. Its subtitle — “Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age” — announces the licence Heider took, and he took a lot of it. The book renders the classic as a manual for running groups: short sections pairing a Taoist paradox with the practical business of facilitating people, drawn from the encounter-group work he had done at Esalen.

That framing is exactly what makes the book a misattribution engine. A reader who copies a sentence out of it keeps the aphorism and the cover’s promise of ancient authority, and loses the one fact that matters — that the English is Heider’s. Stenudd, who has translated and commented on the Tao Te Ching himself, calls the connection to chapter 22 so loose that it is hard to see how Heider got there from the Chinese.

The cover said Lao Tzu. The sentences were Heider’s.

What chapter 22 actually says

James Legge’s public-domain translation begins: “The partial becomes complete; the crooked, straight; the empty, full; the worn out, new. He whose (desires) are few gets them; he whose (desires) are many goes astray.” The chapter’s subject is the advantage of yielding and of not asserting oneself — it closes on the sage who does not strive, and with whom therefore no one in the world is able to strive.

Stenudd sets his own rendering of the opening (“Hulk to be whole. Bend to be straight. Empty to be filled. Wear down to be renewed…”) beside D. C. Lau’s to make the point that the chapter concerns actions and conditions, not remaking one’s identity into a better version.

Explore

Filed under

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

Change Growth Humility

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.

Fake Lao Tzu Quote: "When I let go of what I am..."taoistic.com

Stefan Stenudd's dedicated debunk: not from the Tao Te Ching, traced to Heider's 1985 book, page 43, with his and D. C. Lau's renderings of chapter 22 for comparison.
The Tao of Leadership (1985) — full scanarchive.org

Borrowable scan of the Humanics New Age first edition, the book the wording actually comes from.
Tao Te Ching, translated by James Leggegutenberg.org

Public-domain English translation of the Tao Te Ching, for checking chapter 22 against the popular quotation.
Laozi — sourced and misattributed quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's cited Laozi material; this line appears in neither the sourced nor the misattributed list.
John Heider — In Memoriamesalen.org

Esalen Institute's memorial: Heider joined as a resident fellow in September 1967, stayed to 1971, and wrote The Tao of Leadership out of that group-work experience.
The Tao of leadership — catalogue recordopenlibrary.org

Bibliographic record confirming publisher, place of publication and the 1985 first-publication date.

The man who actually wrote it

John Heider — the psychologist behind the “Lao Tzu” line

John Heider

1936–2010 · American clinical psychologist & Human Potential Movement teacher

John Frederick Heider was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, on 7 November 1936, graduated from Harvard College in 1960 and took a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Duke University in 1968. He joined the Esalen Institute as a resident fellow in September 1967 and stayed until 1971 as an encounter-group leader, later founding the Human Potential School of Mendocino; Esalen co-founder Dick Price encouraged the book and helped him find a publisher. The Tao of Leadership (1985) recast the Tao Te Ching as advice for people who run groups — and, ironically, its most-shared sentences now circulate under Lao Tzu’s name rather than his. He died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, on 26 May 2010.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Source

Heider, John. The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age. Atlanta: Humanics New Age, 1985, p. 43 (page cited by Stefan Stenudd, Fake Lao Tzu Quotes, taoistic.com). Compare Laozi, The Tao Teh King, chap. 22, translated by James Legge (Project Gutenberg ebook 216), which contains no such line.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be’?” Last verified 27 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/when-i-let-go-of-what-i-am-i-become-what-i-might-be/

Copied