A picture paints a thousand words

hi,
I am looking for the meaning and eplaination about the following quote:
A picture paints a thousand words
Bye

Simply put, it means that a picture will be far more descriptive of something than words can ever be, or, to put it another way, no matter how hard you try, you can't beat a visual presentation.

Having sat through far too many Powerpoint-rich presentations from Microsoft worker ants in my time, I have to entirely disagree. The acolytes of Saint Bill of Seattle manage effortlessly to be meaningless, no matter which medium they choose to present in.

And allegedly first made by Confucius, I believe.

Yes, it is said to be a Chinese proverb (whether made up by Kung Fu Tze, Confucius, or just a folk saying). But I have read that the original is better translated from Chinese in this way: "One showing is better than one hundred sayings." And I suppose a "showing" could be either a picture or diagram, on the one hand, or perhaps in in-person showing or demonstration. In any case, if we consider that, in English, a "saying" may typically involve ten words, then we can see where the "thousand words" bit was substituted for the direct translation.

It would be great if a Chinese-language expert posted on this. But I believe from what I have read in the past that the direct translation, rather than being just what I said before, is more like this: "one showing same one-hundred sayings." From which it is easy to make the freer (more eloquent-sounding) English saying "a picture is worth a thousand words."