“Asking broadens understanding; relying only on oneself makes it narrow.” The line appears in the “Speech of Zhong Hui” in the Book of Documents. Yu means ample or spacious, while ziyong refers to acting solely on one’s own opinion. In context, Zhong Hui praises King Tang by contrasting openness to enquiry with the narrowness of self-certainty.
The sentence does not ask us to abandon judgement. A question matters because its answer may revise what we already think; if we only want agreement, asking many people can still be a form of relying on ourselves. When a problem feels familiar, it is worth checking whether we are gathering support or genuinely allowing evidence and another person’s experience to change the conclusion.
https://ctext.org/shang-shu/speech-of-zhong-hui/zh
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