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Who really said it

Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream

Not Lao Tzu — from a 2004 self-help book Aileen Miga & Janice Hughes Authors of ‘Inspired Wealth’ (2004)
Disputed In copyright

The line is a modern personal-development passage. Wikiquote ↗ traces it to ‘Inspired Wealth: Financial Leadership for the 21st Century’ (2004) by Aileen Miga and Janice Hughes, p. 44, and notes the Laozi tag has circulated since at least 2006. It appears nowhere in the Tao Te Ching — which, as taoistic.com ↗ points out, never once discusses dreams.

Last verified 14 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream” Misattributed to Lao Tzu. Documented source: Aileen Miga & Janice Hughes, Inspired Wealth: Financial Leadership for the 21st Century (2004), p. 44 (per Wikiquote).

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Lao Tzu. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Aileen Miga & Janice Hughes (and/or their publisher)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Aileen Miga & Janice Hughes — Authors of Inspired Wealth: Financial Leadership for the 21st Century (2004). Theme: "Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The documented source

Real source
Inspired Wealth: Financial Leadership for the 21st Century (2004)
Authors
Aileen Miga & Janice Hughes
Falsely credited to
Lao Tzu / Laozi (fl. c. 6th century BC)
Earliest Laozi misattribution
Attested since at least 2006

Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream. Popularly mis-credited to Lao Tzu

The full passage as it circulates online; only the first two sentences are usually quoted. Per Wikiquote, this text traces to Inspired Wealth (2004), p. 44 — not to any translation of Laozi.

Wikiquote: Laozi (Misattributed)

How we traced it

  • Wikiquote ↗ lists the line in its Misattributed section and identifies the real source as ‘Inspired Wealth: Financial Leadership for the 21st Century’ (2004) by Aileen Miga and Janice Hughes, p. 44.
  • Wikiquote adds that the misattribution to Laozi has been attested since at least 2006 ↗.
  • Stefan Stenudd’s taoistic.com ↗ confirms it is not in the Tao Te Ching, which “did not discuss dreams even once,” and dates the oldest online posting to a blog on 8 February 2008.
  • Quote sites such as PassItOn ↗ and Goodreads still circulate the full passage under Lao Tzu’s name with no source.
In copyright

Per Wikiquote, the exact wording originates in Inspired Wealth: Financial Leadership for the 21st Century (2004) by Aileen Miga and Janice Hughes — a work first published in 2004 and therefore in copyright in the United States. It is not an ancient text, and no public-domain Laozi translation contains this line.

Fact-check

Why Lao Tzu gets the credit

This is a modern motivational passage that acquired an ancient byline. Lao Tzu’s name lends gravitas to feel-good lines, and the quote has snowballed across quote sites, memes and greeting-card style graphics.

Lao Tzu / Laozi Misattributed

The line does not appear in the Tao Te Ching. Taoistic.com ↗ notes Laozi’s work “did not discuss dreams even once,” and Wikiquote ↗ files it under Misattributed.

The real source, per Wikiquote ↗, is ‘Inspired Wealth: Financial Leadership for the 21st Century’ (2004) by Aileen Miga and Janice Hughes, p. 44 — a 21st-century self-help book, not the Tao Te Ching.

Context

A modern line in ancient dress

The passage reads like classical wisdom — a gardening metaphor about nurturing dreams — but its imagery and cadence are pure modern self-help. The “water your dreams” framing surfaces in personal-development and prosperity writing of the 1990s and 2000s; Wikiquote pins this specific wording to a 2004 finance-and-leadership book.

Attaching Lao Tzu’s name is what gave it reach. It is a textbook example of how a contemporary aphorism, once tagged to a revered ancient sage, becomes almost impossible to dislodge from quote databases.

The Tao Te Ching never once mentions dreams.

On the “water your dreams” family of sayings

The metaphor is common enough that several writers have used variants — e.g. Matshona Dhliwayo’s “Water your dreams with fear, and they will wilt…” — but those are separate modern authors, not sources for the Laozi-tagged passage.

Taoistic.com traced the oldest online posting of the complete quote to a blog dated 8 February 2008; Wikiquote documents the Laozi misattribution as far back as 2006, and the underlying text to 2004.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Doubt Hope Growth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Laozi (Misattributed)en.wikiquote.org

Places the quote in the Misattributed section and names the true 2004 source book and page.
Fake Lao Tzu Quote: taoistic.comtaoistic.com

Stefan Stenudd shows the line is absent from the Tao Te Ching and dates the earliest online appearance.
Inspired Wealth (2004) at the Internet Archivearchive.org

Catalog record for the Miga & Hughes book Wikiquote cites as the real source (p. 44).
PassItOn: the quote credited to Lao Tzupassiton.com

Example of the full passage circulating under Lao Tzu's name with no source.
Tao Te Ching (Legge translation) at Wikisourceen.wikisource.org

The actual public-domain text of Laozi's work, where this passage does not appear.

The real source

Where the quote actually comes from

Aileen Miga & Janice Hughes

Authors of Inspired Wealth: Financial Leadership for the 21st Century (2004)

Aileen Miga and Janice Hughes are the co-authors of Inspired Wealth: Financial Leadership for the 21st Century (2004), a personal-finance and leadership self-help book. According to Wikiquote, the “water your dreams” passage originates on page 44 of their book — long before it was ever pinned on Laozi. They are not ancient philosophers, and the passage reflects modern motivational writing, not classical Taoism.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Documented source

Aileen Miga and Janice Hughes, Inspired Wealth: Financial Leadership for the 21st Century (2004), p. 44; documented as the source in “Laozi” (Misattributed), Wikiquote.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream’?” Last verified 14 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/be-careful-what-you-water-your-dreams-with-water-them-with

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