“Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it”: did Laozi say it?
Genuine: chapter 78
Yes: “Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it” is a free rendering of the opening of chapter 78 of the Dao De Jing, 天下莫柔弱于水.
Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.
What the Dao De Jing says
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天下莫柔弱于水，
Nothing in the world is softer or weaker than water,
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而攻坚强者，莫之能胜，
yet for attacking the hard and strong, nothing surpasses it,
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其无以易之。
for nothing can take its place.
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弱之胜强，
The weak overcomes the strong,
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柔之胜刚，
the soft overcomes the hard:
What the Chinese says
天下莫柔弱于水: “under heaven nothing is softer and weaker than water”. Then: “yet for attacking the hard and strong”, 莫之能胜, “nothing can surpass it”. Our translation: “Nothing in the world is softer or weaker than water, yet for attacking the hard and strong, nothing surpasses it.”
What changed
Little. 弱 is “weak” rather than “flexible”, and the Chinese says that nothing beats water at wearing down the hard, not that nothing can resist it. The circulating line turns water's attack into its defence, but the sense, the soft outlasting the hard, is the text's. We found no translation with this exact wording; it reads as a modern retelling. James Legge (1891) has “There is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water, and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can take precedence of it.”
The line in its chapter
The chapter draws the rule from the image: 柔之胜刚, “the soft overcomes the hard”, which “everyone in the world knows, yet no one can practice”. Chapter 8 makes water the image of the highest good, and chapter 43 says the softest thing in the world runs through the hardest.