The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe because its handle was made of wood and they thought it was one of the them.
Proverbs, Sayings, and Adages
Turkish Proverb
While this particular phrasing is widely labeled online as a Turkish proverb, it is a fairly recent reformulation of a Talmudic or Turkish set of proverbs, and is not credited solely to the Turks.
The Babylonian Talmud (6th Century AD) includes a passage (Sanhedrin, Perek 4, 39B), indicating it was a common proverb:As this is as people say: From and within the forest comes the ax to it, as the handle for the ax that chops the tree is from the forest itself.
As well as:This is as people say: From and within the forest comes the ax to it, as King David was a descendant of Ruth the Moabite.
This phrase was brought into English in Rev. J. Ray's A Collection of English Proverbs (1678) as a "Hebrew Adage":The axe goes to the wood, from whence it borrowed its helve: [the saying] is used against those who are injurious to those from whom they are derived, or from whom they have received their power.
Ray's work continued in reprint for over a century, well-establishing the phrase in English.
In a similar vein, Metin Yurtbaşı's Dictionary of Turkish Proverbs (1993) includes two such phrases, indexed under "Ingratitude". It attributes these back to Ebüzziya Tevfik, Durüb-ı, Emsâl-i Osmaniyye [Ottoman Proverbs] (1885). First:They struck at the tree with an ax; and the tree said: “The handle is made from my body.”
[Ağaca balta vurmuşlar, “Sapı bedenimden” demiş.]
Second:An ax went into the woods and its handle was of itself.
[Ormana (bir) balta girmiş sapı yine kendisinden (imiş).]
There are a variety of later uses, in books and then in social media, that further evolved the concept into the quotation that leads this entry, which was first tweeted by @mabarsayaaaaa (2018-02-24). In this more political form, it and further variants have also been credited as an African (Yoruba) proverb (often by African tweeters).
For more discussion of the background and origin of this quotation, see:
