<P> One Picture is Worth a Thousand Words The San Antonio Light's Pictorial Magazine of the War Exemplifies the truth of the above statement--judging from the warm </P> <P> reception it has received at the hands of the Sunday Light readers . </P> <P> It is believed by some that the modern use of the phrase stems from an article by Fred R. Barnard in the advertising trade journal Printers' Ink, promoting the use of images in advertisements that appeared on the sides of streetcars . The December 8, 1921, issue carries an ad entitled, "One Look is Worth A Thousand Words ." Another ad by Barnard appears in the March 10, 1927, issue with the phrase "One Picture Worth Ten Thousand Words", where it is labeled a Chinese proverb . The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Familiar Phrases quotes Barnard as saying he called it "a Chinese proverb, so that people would take it seriously ." Nonetheless, the proverb soon after became popularly attributed to Confucius . The actual Chinese expression "Hearing something a hundred times isn't better than seeing it once" (百 闻 不 如 一 见, p bǎi wén bù rú yī jiàn) is sometimes introduced as an equivalent, as Watts's "One showing is worth a hundred sayings". This was published as early as 1966 discussing persuasion and selling in a book on engineering design . In March 1911, in the Syracuse Advertising Men's Club, Arthur Brisbane wrote: "Use a picture . It's worth a thousand words ." </P> <P> Despite this modern origin of the popular phrase, the sentiment has been expressed by earlier writers . For example, the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev wrote (in Fathers and Sons in 1861), "The drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over ten pages in a book ." The quote is sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, who said "A good sketch is better than a long speech" (French: Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours). While this is sometimes translated today as "A picture is worth a thousand words," this translation does not predate the phrase's common use in English . </P>

A picture speaks a thousand words in chinese
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