You need to be careful of supposed Chinese proverbs; I recently found that the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" was actually created in the fifties by Eric Frank Russell.
Maybe the problem is that you're focusing too much on whether the proverb is authentic Chinese rather than on whether it accurately captures reality?
A monthly thread for posting any interesting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently on the Internet, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages.