Confucius

Confucius was a minor official in the state of Lu in the sixth century BCE who failed to find a ruler who would take his advice, travelled for years from court to court, and returned home to teach. He wrote nothing; the Analects, sayings and exchanges recorded by his students, are the source of his teaching that good government rests on the virtue of the ruler and that virtue is learned through ritual, study and the cultivation of humaneness. Two thousand years of Chinese education were built on it, and the examination system on memorising it. The lists assign him as the other founding teacher.