Sunshu Ao (7th-6th century BCE)
“If orders are issued too frequently to the people they will not know which ones to obey.”
- A saying attributed to Sunshu Ao, recorded by Sima Qian (c. 145-90 BCE) in his Records of the Grand Historian (Shi Ji 119). The translation used here is by Burton Watson (Columbia University Press, 1993).
