The Tao Te Ching is a 2500 year old text by author Lao Tzu.
Scholars consider it to be the most ancient writing we know
of which was the starting point of the world's major religions.
From Chapter 29, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin:
"Those who think to win the world
by doing something to it,
I see them come to grief.
For the world is a sacred object.
Nothing is to be done to it.
To do anything to it is to damage it.
To seize it is to lose it."
