Talk:give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

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Latest comment: 2 years ago by 86.8.144.235 in topic Original source
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Original source

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Latest comment: 2 years ago8 comments8 people in discussion

I think I remember reading that this idiom originally came from a Chinese saying, can anyone verify this? Tooironic 11:44, 30 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

This is one of those sayings that gets attributed to anyone who seems wise and exotic, because no one knows where it came from and people want to attribute it to someone. A similar case is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. You can also find a good number of unsourceable quotes attributed to authors such as w:Benjamin Franklin and w:Mark Twain for similar reasons. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:34, 28 October 2014 (UTC)Reply

It is a common practice to attribute origins of proverbs to some obscure Chinese philosopher or other Asia origins, but in fact this is attributed to Maimonides, and most of the proverbs that we used either come from the Bible or other western source.— This unsigned comment was added by 68.90.16.2 (talk) at 14:54, 17 September 2015 (UTC).Reply

I've actually met people who swear this is from the Bible. Entrybreak (talk) 21:57, 28 May 2017 (UTC)Reply

Exploration results presented on https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/28/fish/. Mcljlm (talk) 00:01, 9 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

As a Chinese myself, I totally understand this is widely believed to be an ancient Chinese idiom 授人以鱼不如授人以渔. After all, this is what we are being taught from childhood. However, such claims lack a concrete source, there is no record of it before 20th century. Some people claim that it comes from 临渊而羡鱼，不如归家结网 (zh:w:淮南子|w:Huainanzi, written sometime before 139 BC) lit. to dream about catching fish by the river is no better than to go home and make a fishing net, but the wording is so different (e.g. it does not relate to the idea of "giving" in any way like the modern version does) that it's more likely 授人以鱼不如授人以渔 is translated from English sometime during 20th century, not the other way around. As such, I'm going to remove the etymology entry until someone can come up with a reliable source. ZypA13510 (talk) 05:02, 14 February 2020 (UTC)Reply


I get the intended meaning but really if the man lived close enough to a source of fish to keep him fed for a lifetime he would have worked it out for himself.86.8.144.235 19:02, 26 November 2021 (UTC)Reply

Request for deletion

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Latest comment: 14 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

Originally added by one of the incarnations of Wonderfool. I'm of two minds about his one. On the one hand, yes it is a valid proverb. On the other hand, it's so damn long that it just doesn't seem to belong in a dictionary, and it must have somewhere between umpteen and a gazillion alternative forms which will make it relatively unlikely that any given user will manage to type a form that matches the entry or any redirects we create. Delete or keep? What's the right thing to do? -- WikiPedant 00:31, 20 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

I would say keep, because it's a legitimate proverb; but the lack of capitalisation causes me physical pain. Can this be the only multi-sentence entry title we have?! Equinox ◑ 00:48, 20 January 2010 (UTC)Reply
We should have a separate page for all matters relating to overlong headwords. They mess up the TOC something awful. So whatever we do, let's do it quick.
Keep It's a more certainly a valid proverb than some. The search engine might find it for someone. DCDuring TALK 00:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)Reply
Equinox, might a semicolon ease your pain?​—msh210℠ 19:36, 20 January 2010 (UTC)Reply
Keep per Equinox and DCDuring. Mglovesfun (talk) 04:23, 25 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Kept. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

RFM discussion: January 2014

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The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

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Latest comment: 10 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

It's odd to start the first part off with a lowercase letter, but then divide the first part from the second part with a full stop and start the second part off with a capital letter (and still not end it with a full stop of its own). I suggest the page be moved to give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime, although Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime(.) would also make sense. (Also, the whole thing could be shortened if anyone wants, e.g. by replacing both "and you"s with commas.) - -sche (discuss) 08:57, 8 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Suggested variations you could try:

More information

TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 10:34, 8 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Moved to give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. - -sche (discuss) 18:24, 11 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
Per this note on the given talkpage, should we just create redirects for the rest of these alternative forms? TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 00:23, 12 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
I don't think it would be useful to create redirects for all the punctuation variants, in that anyone who starts typing one of them into the search bar will already see the lemmatized form brought up, and anyone using our own site's search or Google to search for a punctuation variant will likewise find the lemma because both search engines recognize punctuation differences as trivial. Also, several of the wordings you offer above are not attested, e.g. "give man fish and you feed him for a day". But if you want to create redirects for all the punctuation variants of the wordings that are attested, well, I don't think it'd be useful, but I don't think it'd be harmful, either, so knock yourself out. - -sche (discuss) 05:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)Reply


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