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1 " Guan Zhong explains (as the fourth-century-BC Guanzi attests) that management of water is the key to maintaining social order. There are ‘five harmful influences’ in nature, he says, including drought and pestilence – but floods are the worst. Uncontrolled water has a symbolic as well as a pragmatic impact: it leads to the breakdown of filial piety and disintegration of social relations. "
― Philip Ball , The Water Kingdom
2 " water is so protean a medium that it can be made to fit any purpose. "
3 " A ruler who failed to manage China’s waters didn’t just risk social decay. He exposed himself to the charge that heaven itself had lost confidence in his capacity to rule. This idea is attributed to the Duke of Zhou, "
4 " officials gained their posts by demonstrating their knowledge of the Confucian classics; they had no reason to be versed in hydraulic engineering per se. In other words, there was a dangerously narrow view of what qualified a man for a government position (although in some ways the appointment of ministers in modern Western democracies is not so different). "
5 " regimes of the twentieth century depended not just on repression and control of the populace but on the active construction of national myth. Here the state leaders adopt the role of wise, courageous patriarchs who bravely resist decadent and predatory foreign influence, while the self-sacrifice expected of citizens is celebrated with heroic images and narratives. The state becomes the source of moral virtue. "
