What does 尽信书不如无书 mean? After pointing out the many bugs in an online Chinese "how to give a presentation in English" webpage, one of my colleagues wrote this on WeChat:


  尽信书不如无书
  Jìn xìn shū bùrú wú shū


Question: What does 尽信书不如无书 mean?

Breaking this down:


尽 (jìn) = "exhausted"
信 (xìn) = "evidence" (maybe (?))
书 (shū) = "book"
不如 (bùrú) = "not as good as"
无 (wú) = "no" (in the sense of "the absence of")
书 (shū), as above.


My closest guess is "a book of misinformation is worse than no book".  One of the (Chinese) students said "sort of" when I asked if this was okay.
尽 (jìn) = &quot;completely&quot;
信 (xìn) = &quot;believe in&quot;
书 (shū) = &quot;book&quot;
不如 (bùrú) = &quot;better off&quot;
无 (wú) = &quot;without&quot;
书 (shū) = &quot;book&quot;
&quot;尽信书不如无书&quot; mean &quot;It is better to have no book at all than blindly believe in everything in the books&quot;

Prejudice is worse than ignorance; wrong information is worse than no information
prejudice: preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.
ignorance: lack of knowledge or information

The phrase is not telling you not to read. It is telling you to also think for yourself when you read.