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2 quotes by Confucius · clear filters

the journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step

Confuciusmisattributed·The Tao Teh King, or the Tao and its Characteristics (trans. James Legge)·1891

Wrongly attributed

Not Confucius. The line is from the Tao Teh King, a different book by a different school, traditionally ascribed to Laozi -- a figure whose very existence historians doubt. Two things drift in the popular version: li becomes miles, and commenced becomes begins with. Legge's 1891 translation, the standard English text for a century, says neither.

I suppose the Patron meant that if you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn.

Confuciusmisattributed·Mrs. Dymond, by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie·1885

Wrongly attributed

Sold on posters as an ancient Chinese proverb and as Confucius, Lao Tzu or Maimonides by turns. Its first known appearance in English is this one, in a now-forgotten novel by Thackeray's daughter, published in 1885. What almost nobody quoting it knows is that even here it is second-hand: Max is not stating his own principle, he is guessing at what an absent character called the Patron meant. The wording is also not the familiar one. There is no feed him for a day and no feed him for a lifetime; there is an hour, and a good turn.