The story
This saying comes from the Tao Te Ching, a short Chinese book of wisdom over 2,000 years old. Tradition credits it to the sage Laozi, though scholars debate whether he was one real person or a legend.
It is found in chapter 64. Its “miles” were really li, an old Chinese measure much shorter than a mile.
Read closely, the original says that a journey of a thousand li “starts beneath one’s feet.” The point isn’t so much the step as the place: every long road begins exactly where a person is standing now.
The Tao Te Ching has come down in many old copies, and they don’t always match word for word. That is one reason translations of this line vary so much.
English translators smoothed it into “begins with a single step,” and that is the form that spread around the world.
