Talk:American proverbs

Old comments

I removed the redirect... there are quite a few proverbs that are American but not Native American.

"I'm asking for objections here, loads of these aren't "American Proverbs" although they're common in America as well as Europe- and they're attributed to random people No way is Ben Franklin responsible for those, they've been around since before Columbus landed. I'm listing the ones I've removed here.

   * A stitch in time saves nine. [Ben Franklin]
   * Penny wise and pound foolish. [Ben Franklin]
   * The early bird catches the worm. [Ben Franklin]
   * You catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar
   * Between the devil and the deep blue sea.
   * All roads lead to Rome They though this was American?
   * A bad workman always blames his tools
   * All's well that ends well
   * When in Rome do as the Romans do
   * Kill two birds with one stone
   * He who laughs last laughs longest
   * Jack of all trades, master of none

Moved proverb here pending some reference: ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 13:48, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Money can't buy luck, it comes with money for free.

nice one

"A penny saved is a penny earned."

   * Attributed to Benjamin Franklin; Poor Richard's Almanac.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/English_proverbs

It's American.

"He who Laughs Last... Probably didn't get the joke..."

The proverbs that are listed as American proverbs are a poor smattering of the genuine American pragmatists that have founded and guided our nation. Some of the sarcastic proverbs are corruptions of original more meaningful proverbs "he who laughs last didn't get the joke"... that is an amusing proverb, but let's not forget the original proverb that led us to the derivation in the first place. If the original proverbs are not American they should at least be included so as not to confuse the reveiwers of this article.

Question about definition of proverb: are they really proverbs??

Are these quotes "proverbs"? In other words are we better to rather call them "famous quotes of American people"? In my understanding, proverbs are usually anonymous and based on tradition - not attributed to famous people with exceptions. And also proverbs are normally short and blitz - not so long as those quotes on this page. I am afraid there is a sort of confusion. --Aphaia 15:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I've never really like any of the "proverb" pages we have here; there's no clear definition on what is and what is not a proverb, and given their nature, it's difficult to provide sources for them beyond someone using one in a book somewhere. With this page specifically, it does appear as though few, if any, of the so-called proverbs are anything more than just quotes from famous people; the English proverbs page seems to do a much better job at listing proverbs than this one, and is more inclusive (though I really disagree with permitting "interpretations" of the proverbs to live on that, and other, pages). In this case, I would think the best course of action would be to merge whatever actual proverbs aren't yet included in English proverbs and then redirect this page there. —LrdChaos (talk) 15:49, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Another way to address the general problem is to start with proper sourcing, instead of scrambling to find them. If we insisted that each "proverb" have a reliable source that said it was a proverb, or (in the case of published quote collections) categorized it as a proverb, we would have verifiability. Yes, it would signficantly reduce the amount of material we'd have, but the quality would be vastly improved. (Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting we copy entire collections from published works, which would be a presentation copyvio. We must be selective, as always. On the other hand, we would probably avoid presentation copyvio problems if quotes had multiple sources.) I don't really expect anything like this to happen in the foreseeable future, as sourcing even on Wikipedia is typically an afterthought, but that's my 2 cents. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:08, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

How is this a proverb?!?!?

I was scrolling through this article and noticed one proverb "as the crow flies", which I know is very common in America but how in the world did this get so popular? Also, I didn't find it in this article, and it's not a proverb (the above really isn't either) but "make a beeline for" ... These two phrases are really oxymoronic or I don't know what the word is for them, but anyhow, both the crow and the bee zig zag all over the place, so if say, Town A and Town B are 35 miles apart on the highway but only 20 miles with a straight line, "as the crow flies" could mean anywhere from 20 to 100 miles depending on the range of that particular crow. Ya know what I mean? So ... should "as the crow flies" be moved to a page of common sayings? or what?

Explanations of the proverbs

Many of the entries are followed by short explanations. For example:

• A handful of gold is a heart of iron.
  • Material wealth and prosperity in no way denotes honest labor or ethical practices.

It's bad enough that the proverbs themselves are unsourced, but these explanations are presumably just some Wikiquote editor's opinion. If they are obvious enough that the explanation is self-explanatory, then we don't need them. If they aren't self-explanatory then we shouldn't be adding our own interpretations. If there's no objection, I'll delete all of the unsourced explanations.   Will Beback  talk  23:50, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that contributor explanations are not a good idea. After all, this is not Wikiparaphrase. You may want to mention what you are planning at the Village Pump, where a thread on proverbs was (re-)started recently. ~ Ningauble 15:09, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've posted there to get input before embarking on a deletion campaign.   Will Beback  talk  11:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I also replied at the village pump. To me, proverbs without explanation are quite useless and I am afraid that it will take a long time if ever before we get sourced explanations. I do not expect many mistakes or disputes on the explanations. Andries 13:18, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Attributed quotations

My opinion is that these are supposed to be proverbs rather than quotations. If we can attribute it, it probably isn't a proverb. (Though we could certainly cite some individual usage.)

• Clothes make the man, naked people have little or no influence in society. - Mark Twain

In this case, it looks like Twain is commenting on the proverb, "clothes make the man", rather than coining the phrase. Likewise, this proverb predates the quotation:

• There's no place like home. - Dorothy, in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.

It may even predate this maudlin poem, "Home, Sweet Home", probably written over 50 years earlier.[1] It's a true proverb, but not because it was in a movie or a book. Since these are essentially quotations of proverbs they might still belong here. We could arrange them like this:

• Clothes make the man.
  • Clothes make the man, naked people have little or no influence in society. - Mark Twain
• There's no place like home.
  • There's no place like home. - Dorothy, in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.

But that seems a little silly. Thoughts?

A different case is this:

• We have nothing to fear, but fear itself. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

It's a very famous line from an inaugural speech, but it's not really a proverb. Every time I've seen it used it's been as a quotation, at least implicitly. Lastly, there are some attributed to non-notable individuals, such as this one:

• If knowledge of all is power, then knowledge of self is divine. - Carlos Lugo II

I'd just get rid of anything that isn't an obvious proverb with an attribution like that. (I already deleted one, probably added by the cited speaker.[2])   Will Beback  talk  09:46, 2 March 2011 (UTC)