The knife cuts bread and fingers. Ye Fan's Biography of Huangfugui in the Southern Song Dynasty quoted Confucius as saying: "Confucius said,' A husband can sail a boat, but a man can swim. The knife cuts bread and fingers. If you think of danger from this, you can know. "

Emperor Taizong once quoted this sentence. It means that the people are water, the king is a boat, the people feed the king, just like a boat floating on the water, and the people want to overthrow the king, just like the water overturns the boat. Extend to the hearts of the people and decide life and death. It is equivalent to "those who win the hearts of the people win the world, and those who lose the hearts of the people lose the world."