KILL THE GOOSE THAT LAYS THE GOLDEN EGGS Definition & Meaning

kill the goose that lays the golden eggs

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Idioms and Phrases

Destroy a source of riches through stupidity or greed, as in If he never gives his loyal customers a break on some items in his store, he'll kill the goose that lays the golden eggs . This expression, already a proverb in the late 1400s, alludes to Aesop's fable about a farmer whose goose lays one golden egg a day, and who kills the goose in the mistaken belief that he'll get all the eggs at once.

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

“And we can kill the goose that lays the golden eggs in the process of overregulating.”

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“These firms — high tech — are the reason California has a budget surplus, as opposed to a deficit,” he said, adding later: “We want to make sure that we don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

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Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs: let’s hear no more about regulations; forget taxes – they’re what governments waste.

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“We can’t kill the ‘goose that lays the golden eggs’ of the agricultural industry.”

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“The biggest fear, as always, is that politicians will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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