Word.ws English Dictionary

let a thousand flowers bloom

let a thousand flowers bloom proverb: one should not interfere with promising developments in their early stages.

Proverb

let a thousand flowers bloom

  1. One should not interfere with promising developments in their early stages.
    • It is probably safe to say that each year thousands of workers are victims of what might be called the “let a thousand flowers bloom” maneuver, formulated by Mao Tse-tung when he controlled the world's most populous country.2002, Robert J. Sternberg, Todd I. Lubart, Defying the Crowd, page 1
    • There's no haggling over specs or schedules. It's simply: let a thousand flowers bloom (or 140,000 flowers and growing, to be more exact)2008, Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, page 195

Origin of let a thousand flowers bloom

A calque of Chinese 百花齊放，百家爭鳴 /百花齐放，百家争鸣 (bǎihuā-qífàng, bǎijiā-zhēngmíng) ("let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend"), from various speeches made by Mao Zedong during the 1950s.

Questions about let a thousand flowers bloom

What does let a thousand flowers bloom mean?
Let a thousand flowers bloom means one should not interfere with promising developments in their early stages.
What part of speech is let a thousand flowers bloom?
Let a thousand flowers bloom is a proverb.

Words near let a thousand flowers bloom in the dictionary

  1. Leszczynskis
  2. Leszno
  3. les🫘
  4. let
  5. let a sleeping dog lie
  6. let a thousand flowers bloom
  7. let alone
  8. let along
  9. let be
  10. let blood
  11. let bygones be bygones

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: let a thousand flowers bloom (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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