Virtue

Between the maxims, the Analects lets the Master describe himself — and the self-portrait is humbler than his reputation. A man who claimed to transmit rather than invent, who forgot to eat when a problem gripped him, who was happy with coarse rice and a bent arm for a pillow, and who measured his life in decades of slowly getting it right.

Confucius thought a state was governed the way a person is improved: by example, not by force. Rule the people with laws and punishments and they will dodge you without shame; rule them with virtue and a sense of form and they will correct themselves. Govern, he says, is just another word for set straight.