I like fish, and I also like bear's paws. If I cannot have the two together, I will let the fish go, and take the bear's paws. So, I like life, and I also like righteousness. If I cannot keep the two together, I will let life go, and choose righteousness.
魚，我所欲也；熊掌，亦我所欲也，二者不可得兼，舍魚而取熊掌者也。生，亦我所欲也；義，亦我所欲也，二者不可得兼，舍生而取義者也。
What it means
Everyone already ranks the things they want: offered fish or bear’s paws and allowed only one, you give up the one you value less. Mencius says life and righteousness work the same way, and if he can’t keep both, he will give up life.
He goes on to say this isn’t heroism reserved for a few. Everyone has something they value more than life; what marks out people of “distinguished talents and virtue” is “simply that they do not lose it.”
The context
The passage comes from the Mencius, the book of his conversations, and from the section named after the philosopher Gao, which opens with their debate about human nature. Mencius held that human nature is righteous and humane.
After the fish and the bear’s paws, he gives an example. A man who will die without “a small basket of rice and a platter of soup” will still refuse them if they are offered with an insult: “even a tramper will not receive them.” Yet a man will accept a salary of “ten thousand zhong” “without any consideration of propriety or righteousness,” so that he can have “beautiful mansions,” wives and concubines, and the chance to help the poor and needy he knows. What he wouldn’t do to save his life, he does for comfort. Mencius calls this “Losing the proper nature of one’s mind.”
Why it matters
The dramatic choice, life or righteousness, rarely comes. The point of the passage is the second half: people don’t usually lose their integrity when their life is at stake, but when a comfortable house is.
It helps to know in advance what your bear’s paw is, the thing you’d keep if you could keep only one. Then the small trades, the ones made for convenience or approval, are easier to recognise and refuse.
About Mencius
Chinese Confucian philosopher, c. 371–289 BC
Mencius, born Meng Ke in the state of Zou, in what is now Shandong, China, was a Confucian philosopher often called the “Second Sage”, second in esteem only to Confucius himself. He is said to have been a pupil of Confucius’s grandson Zisi, and during the Warring States period he served as an official and scholar at the Jixia Academy in the state of Qi.
He spent much of his life travelling between states and advising their rulers, and those conversations form the basis of the Mencius, later made one of the Confucian classics. A central idea of his work is that human nature is righteous and humane, which set him against his near contemporary Xunzi, who held that human nature is evil.
The source, and how we checked it
It comes from Mencius, Book VI, Part I, Gaozi I (translated by James Legge), Mencius lived c. 371–289 BC.
We matched the quote word for word against Wikisource's text of James Legge's translation, from volume II of The Chinese Classics (1861; second edition 1895), which prints the Chinese alongside; the Chinese shown here is from the same page. Mencius wrote in Chinese, so other translations word it differently, and the Wikisource text uses modern spellings for some Chinese names. We last checked this on 5 November 2026.