Ikigai Daily
Menu
DriveQuote

Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Anonymous saying, often credited to Abraham Lincoln

Philosophy

The story behind the card

There is no evidence that Abraham Lincoln, who died in 1865, ever said this. The quotation researcher Garson O'Toole traced it to a 1944 speech by the Reverend W. H. Alexander of Oklahoma City, about a lumberjack who, given five minutes to fell a tree, would spend three sharpening his axe. The earliest known link to Lincoln is a 1960 advertisement for drilling equipment, still counting in minutes; versions in hours came later. The idea is older: an American sermon of 1856, “The Dull Axe”, made the same point.

Türkçe oku
Bir ağacı kesmem için bana altı saat verin, ilk dördünü baltayı bilemeye ayırırım.
Abraham Lincoln'e mal edilen anonim söz

1865'te ölen Abraham Lincoln'ün bu sözü söylediğine dair hiçbir kanıt yoktur. Alıntı araştırmacısı Garson O'Toole sözün izini, Oklahoma City'de Papaz W. H. Alexander'ın 1944'te yaptığı bir konuşmaya kadar sürdü. Alexander, ağacı kesmek için beş dakikası olsa üçünü baltasını bilemeye ayıracak bir oduncudan söz ediyordu. Sözü Lincoln'e bağlayan bilinen ilk örnek, 1960 tarihli bir sondaj makinesi reklamıdır; orada da süre dakikayla ölçülür. Saatli biçimler sonradan ortaya çıktı. Fikir ise daha eskidir: ABD'de 1856'da yayımlanan “Kör Balta” başlıklı bir vaaz da aynı şeyi söyler.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Abraham Lincoln
Get the mobile appAbout our cards

Related cards

These cards share a subject or reading mode with the card above.

DrivePhilosophy

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

In Japanese it is nana korobi ya oki (七転び八起き), literally “seven falls, eight risings”. In Japan the saying is linked with the Daruma doll, which portrays Bodhidharma, the monk traditionally credited with bringing Zen Buddhism to China. The doll is round and weighted at the bottom, so it rights itself whenever it is knocked over. Many people paint in one of its eyes when they set themselves a goal, and the other when they reach it. English says “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.”

Japanese ProverbRead card
DrivePhilosophy

When the winds of change blow, some build walls, others build windmills.

The line is widely shared as an ancient Chinese proverb, but no Chinese source for it has been found. The picture works without a source: a wall keeps the wind out, while a windmill catches it and turns its force into work, such as grinding grain or pumping water. The same change can be resisted or put to use. In English, “wind of change” is remembered from Harold Macmillan's 1960 speech in Cape Town, in which the British prime minister described the independence movements sweeping Africa.

Chinese, commonly attributed ProverbRead card
DrivePhilosophy

Dig the well before you are thirsty.

Chinese has the idiom lín kě jué jǐng (临渴掘井), “to dig a well only when thirsty”, said of people who leave preparation too late. The image goes back to the Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic), a medical text compiled more than two thousand years ago. It says that treating an illness once it has developed is like digging a well when already thirsty, or casting weapons after the battle has begun. English gives the medical version as “Prevention is better than cure.”

Chinese ProverbRead card
DrivePhilosophy

A gem cannot be polished without friction.

The line was in print in English by 1836, when John Francis Davis, a British scholar of China who later became Governor of Hong Kong, listed it among Chinese sayings in his book The Chinese. His full version runs: “The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without adversity.” A similar picture appears in the Book of Rites (Liji), one of the Confucian classics: jade that is not carved cannot become a useful vessel, and a person who does not learn cannot know the right way to live.

Proverb (commonly labeled Chinese; this exact wording is not a documented ancient translation, though it echoes a Liji jade/learning image)Read card
DrivePhilosophy

Do good and throw it into the sea.

The saying is shared around the eastern Mediterranean. Arabic has “Do good and throw it into the sea”; Greek says it with a rhyme, “Káne to kaló ke ríxto sto gialó”; and Turkish adds an ending: “İyilik et denize at, balık bilmezse Halik bilir”, if the fish do not know it, the Creator will. Throwing it into the sea means doing good and then letting it go, without keeping score or waiting for thanks, like handing in a lost wallet without leaving your name.

Arabic, Egyptian, Turkish variants ProverbRead card
Next card in the archiveI say “try”; if we never try, we shall never succeed.Read next →