English Explanatory Dictionary

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

English dictionary entry

Meanings

proverb
  1. It is better to teach someone to do something themself than to provide the action's reward; education or training is more helpful charity.

Pronunciation

En-us-give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.ogg

Word forms

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

Etymology

Apparently coined by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie in her 1885 novel Mrs. Dymond, although frequently now attributed to Laozi or other Chinese thinkers.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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