Background
Wei Zheng was born in 580, shortly before the founding of Sui Dynasty in 581. His family was from Julu Commandery (鉅鹿, roughly modern Xingtai, Hebei). His father Wei Changxian (魏長賢) was a county magistrate during Northern Qi. Wei lost his father early in life and was poor, but had great expectations, not caring about making wealth. At one point, he became a Taoist monk. He favored studying, and as he saw that the rule of Emperor Yang of Sui was beginning to make Sui fall into a state of confusion, he particularly paid attention to strategic works.
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“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
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—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)