Where did this saying come from Teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry?

Answer 1

Individual vs. Universe

It means if you gives somebody help/aid it may only benefit them for a short time but if you teach somebody some skills it will benefit them for a lifetime.

if you give something to someone they need someone to do it all the time but if you teach someone how to do something they dependable on themselves.

Answer 2

It basically means that if one is taught halfheartedly, one will remember it for a certain time but if one is taught with full interest , and the teacher is able to capture the person's complete attention, one will remember it for a life time andalso means that if knowledge is provided, not with full intention of gaining the maximum from it , it won't be of much use. If something is taught to you with full guidance and compassion , it'll certainly be a life time achievement.

The interpretation above is BS. A much more literal interpretation would be that if you fix a symptom of a problem, it is only a temporary fix. If you fix the problem, the symtom will go away. This can be applied to anything. I try to use the principle when people ask computer questions. You can give them the answer and they will be satisfied until they have another question or you can teach them how to find the answer themselves and they will be self sufficient.

Taken literally, the proverb means - don't just feed someone a meal, teach them how to provide for themselves.

Answer 3

This proverb has fallen foul of the spurious etymological rule: 'if you don't know the origin of an enigmatic proverb, say it is ancient Chinese' (May you live in interesting times) and (A picture is worth a thousand words ) suffer the same fate. There's no evidence to link 'Give a man a fish...' with China.

The expression actually originated in Britain in the mid 19th century.

Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, the daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, wrote a story called Mrs. Dymond, sometime in the 1880s and it includes this line.

"He certainly doesn't practise his precepts, but 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."

The book was published in 1890 but the story was put into print a few years earlier. The American magazine Littell's Living age printed the story in its September 1885 issue and it was taken from an earlier but undated issue of the British Macmillan's Magazine.

So, the proverb dates from 1885 or shortly before and there's every reason to suppose that it was coined by Anne Ritchie.

The source of the mid-20th century and Chinese origin theories are various US magazines from the 1960s, for example the june 1964 issue of The Rotarian:

...the Chinese axiom "Give a man a fish, and you have fed him once. Teach him how to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime."

Publications of that sort were what brought the proverb into general use but, as I pointed out, wasn't the actual Origin.

Answer 4

you can type it in the internet and youll find it but the authour id unknown!

Answer 5

Feed a man a fish and it'l last a damn long time.

Answer 6

No! He said "If a man dos'nt work, niether should he eat"

Answer 7

It didn't come from The Bible, its an ancient Chinese proverb

Answer 8

It is a proverb.

Answer 9

Lao Tzu