妄自菲薄

Pronunciation: wàng zì fěi bó Literal meaning: Wrongly self-deprecate

Origin & Usage

Zhuge Liang, in the memorial written before his first northern campaign, tells the young Liu Shan not to 妄自菲薄 — not to belittle (菲薄) himself (自) without cause (妄) — and not to reach for improper analogies, since either would close off the path of honest advice. The context is worth keeping: it is addressed to somebody who had real authority and was not using it. 妄 is the load-bearing character, marking the self-deprecation as unwarranted rather than modest, and Chinese still uses the phrase to tell somebody their humility has turned into a way of not trying.

Examples

English: "Don't underestimate yourself - you have great potential."

Chinese: 不要妄自菲薄，你有很大的潜力。