the.com/golden rule
Treat others how you'd want treated — ethics compressed into one portable sentence.
means The principle that you should treat other people the way you yourself would want to be treated.
from The phrase 'golden rule' itself seems to have emerged in English around the 1600s as a label — 'golden' meaning precious or supremely valuable, applied to a rule judged the best of all rules. The principle it names is far older and shows up independently across cultures and centuries: versions of it appear in the sayings attributed to Confucius, in Jewish teaching (notably Hillel's 'what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor'), and in the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels ('do unto others'). So the ethic is ancient and recurring; the catchy 'golden' label is the comparatively recent part, a shorthand for calling it the best rule of all.
- origin
- Appears in Confucius, the Torah, and Jesus independently
- real name
- Called golden since the 1600s, not biblical times
- flaw
- Assumes everyone wants the same treatment you do
- upgrade
- Platinum rule: treat others how they want treated