One of my favorite wisdoms:
A man is born gentle and flexible.
At his death he is hard and stiff.
Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
At their death they are withered and dry.

So it is that the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.
A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

The hard and strong will fall.
The soft and flexible will overcome.
Since translations from Chinese vary widely, I took some liberty with the translation to reflect the proper meaning as I perceive it. Specifically, I replaced "weak" with "flexible". Other translations use "lithe", or "supple", which are less clumsy, but would not be as easily understood by my non-English friends.

Just to be sure, Tao te ching also contains a lot of crap, otherwise.