Introduction

The Tao Te Ching is one of the more popularly translated texts of all historical Chinese writings. Despite the many efforts that have gone into studying and translating Lao Tzu's works, it still remains very difficult to understand, even to native readers. Therefore, only those who fully comprehend the text can translate it properly.

This version opts to give as accurate of a translation in as plain of English as possible. Since our goal is to bring a comprehensible Tao Te Ching to our readers, we decided against conforming to any sort of poetic forms. Although we used the same original text as some of the other translators, there are some notable differences in our interpretations, such as in Chapters One and Twenty.

In order to better allow our readers to understand the text, this translation also compares Lao Tzu's ideas with other great thinkers, such as Einstein and Napoleon.