“The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas”: did Laozi say it?
A loose paraphrase of chapter 59
Partly: “The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas” is Stephen Mitchell's rewording of chapter 59 of the Dao De Jing, which praises frugality but says nothing of ideas.
The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas.
What the Dao De Jing says
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治人事天，莫若啬。
In governing people and serving heaven, nothing is better than frugality.
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夫唯啬，是谓早服；
Being frugal means submitting early;
What the Chinese says
The chapter opens: 治人事天，莫若啬, “In governing people and serving heaven, nothing is better than frugality.” 啬 is a farmer's thrift: saving, holding back, not spending one's strength. The next line says what it leads to: 夫唯啬，是谓早服, “Being frugal means submitting early.” James Legge (1891) read 早服 as “an early return (to man's normal state)”.
What changed
Mitchell keeps the first word, moderation for 啬, and that is why this counts as a paraphrase. The rest is his. Where the Chinese has “submitting early”, he has freedom from one's own ideas, and he goes on with images the chapter does not have: the sky, sunlight, a mountain, a tree in the wind. The Chinese chapter is a chain: frugality, early submission, virtue gathered again and again, nothing that cannot be overcome, and so the roots of a state that lasts. Wikiquote lists the line under Disputed, as Mitchell's interpretation of chapter 59.