Give a Man a Fish

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

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

A Stock Aesop and Stock Phrase. By now, parodied or twisted at least as often as used straight.

The oldest confirmed version of this proverb can be found in the 1885 novel Mrs. Drymond, by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie:

"I don't suppose even Caron could tell you the difference between material and spiritual," said Max, shrugging his shoulders. "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. But these very elementary principles are apt to clash with the leisure of the cultivated classes. Will Mr. Bagginal now produce his ticket—the result of favour and the unjust sub-division of spiritual environments?" said Du Parc, with a smile.

It has been attributed to many other sources, but no good evidence has ever been produced for any of them.

Examples of Give a Man a Fish include:

Anime and Manga

  • Used incorrectly in Negima? (dub) by Asuna while fishing.

"If you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a day, but if you give him a fish he'll just eat a bunch of fish!"

Literature

  • In the Discworld novel Jingo: "Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."

Live-Action TV

  • Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Don't teach a man to fish, and you feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard."
    • Also in Parks and Recreation, the leader of the "Kaboom" playground-building team:

"Take a man to Kabooming, and he Kabooms. Teach a man to Kaboom, and KABOOM KABOOM KABOOM!!"

  • Arrested Development: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish..." "... and he'll want to use your yacht, and I don't want this thing smelling like fish."

Newspaper Comics

  • Dilbert: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will buy a silly hat. And if you talk to hungry people about fishing, you are a consultant."
  • Jason Love's Snapshots: the Robin Hood cartoon [dead link].

Stand-Up Comedy

  • Some comedienne gave us the salesman's version: "Give a man a fish, and that man knows where to come for fish. Teach a man to fish, and you've just destroyed your market base. What the hell is wrong with you?"
  • Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll sit in your boat and drink all your beer.

Video Games

  • As said by Minsc in Baldur's Gate, after giving money to a beggar:

"You should have given him a sword! Give a man a fish and he feeds himself for a day. Give a man a sword, and he can chow down on the meaty marrow of evil!"

Web Comics

Maxim 21: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow.

  • The alt-text of this xkcd says "Give a man a fish, or he will destroy the only remaining vial of antidote."
  • The Order of the Stick here. The title of that day's strip is, "Technically, the 'Fish' Version is a Subset of This One."

Belkar: Solve a man's problems with violence, help him for a day. Teach a man to solve his problems with violence, help him for a lifetime!

Web Original

  • There's an unusual twist on one floating around the internet: "Give a fish a fish, and you introduce the concept of slavery to an entire species. Teach a fish to fish, and you make him a mythical, nightmarish murderer feared by his own kind."
  • Or, "give a man a fish, and make it illegal to teach fishing".
  • There's another version, source also unknown, although somewhat well-spread across the internet, that goes like this: "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will dragnet the bottom of the ocean floor, dump 90% of what he catches as unmarketable, pollute the skies with greasy black smoke from his fish canning factories, wipe out the various species of fish that he has been exploiting, devastate the ecosystem, process his dead into Soylent Green, fall into a deadly downward spiral of food-riots and warfare, blow up the planet, and be succeeded on the top of the food-chain by cockroaches."
  • An observation from Ed Greenwood:

Hit a man over the head and you drive him bonkers for a day. Teach a man to hit others over the head and he’ll try to run a country.

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