The motto derives from The Analects of Confucius. In Confucius' opinion, if people learn without thinking, the learning would be in vain; if people do it the other way around, it would be extremely dangerous.

In addition, he said "For a noble person, there are nine things of which people think: in seeing, people think of understanding; in listening, people think of clarity; in countenance, people think of gentleness; in acting, people think of courtesy; in speech, people think of honesty; in serving, people think of respect; in doubt, people think of questioning; in anger, people think of difficulties; in obtaining, people think of righteousness". To conclude, in the process of knowledge acquisition, only when learning and thinking are equally emphasized can learners achieve the greatest accomplishments.