“The highest good is like water”: did Laozi say it?
Genuine: chapter 8
Yes: “The highest good is like water” is the first line of chapter 8 of the Dao De Jing, 上善若水, translated word for word.
The highest good is like water.
What the Dao De Jing says
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上善若水。
The highest good is like water.
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水善利万物而不争，
Water benefits all things without struggle,
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处众人之所恶，
it goes to places that everyone abhors,
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故几于道。
thus is almost like the Way.
What the Chinese says
Four characters: 上善若水, “highest good, like water”. The saying in English follows them one for one, and our translation is the same: “The highest good is like water.” James Legge (1891) has “The highest excellence is like (that of) water.”
Why water
The chapter explains at once: water benefits all things without struggle, and it goes to the low places everyone abhors, “thus is almost like the Way”. The good it stands for is two things together: being of use to everything, and 不争, not contending for the high place. The chapter ends on the same word: “Precisely because it does not contend, it is beyond reproach.”
How translations differ
善 is “good” or “excellence”; some versions make it a person, a man of superior virtue, as Stanislas Julien did in French in 1842. The Chinese names no person.