Chloé Zhao, 2021

“People at birth are inherently good.”

Chloé Zhao quoted this line while accepting the 2021 Academy Award for directing Nomadland. She recalled memorizing classical Chinese texts with her father and introduced the opening of the Three Character Classic, a phrase often rendered in English as people at birth are inherently good. Zhao said the idea had remained with her as she traveled and worked, and she dedicated the award to people who held onto goodness in themselves and in one another despite difficulty.

The belief functions as a starting posture rather than a factual claim that people never cause harm. For a filmmaker, approaching subjects as fully human can change what the camera seeks. It may encourage attention to motives, contradictions, humor, labor, and dignity that disappear when a person is treated only as an example of a social category. Nomadland’s nonprofessional participants and observational style made that question of looking central to the film’s reception.

Ideas about inherent goodness have long philosophical histories and are not universally accepted. Trust without boundaries can expose vulnerable people to manipulation, and stories that emphasize goodness can minimize responsibility for violence or exploitation. Zhao’s quote is strongest when it supports curiosity without cancelling evidence. Seeing humanity in a person does not require approving every act, and accountability can affirm moral agency by insisting that choices and consequences matter.

Practice the line by delaying one reductive judgment long enough to ask a better question. What history, fear, loyalty, or hope is shaping this person’s action? Then preserve boundaries and facts while listening to the answer. In storytelling, give characters room to be more than a function in someone else’s plot. Zhao’s Oscar moment connected a childhood lesson with an international audience, suggesting that hope can be culturally rooted and still offered across borders without claiming that human goodness is simple or automatic. Translation adds another layer of care. A classical phrase carries philosophical and linguistic histories that a short English rendering cannot fully contain. Citing the source and acknowledging the translation prevents a universal message from floating free of its tradition. At the same time, audiences can receive the idea without pretending cultural difference has disappeared. Zhao’s use of the text shows how personal memory can enter a global ceremony respectfully: name where the words came from, explain what they have meant in one life, and offer them as an invitation rather than a possession. The phrase becomes richer, not weaker, when its cultural origin and philosophical limits remain visible beside its universal invitation.