put all one's eggs in one basket

1. Risk all of one's resources in a single venture, as in He had warned Peter about investing heavily in a single stock; it was putting all his eggs in one basket. This proverb, first recorded in 1710, has largely replaced the much older trust all one's goods to one ship. Mark Twain played on it in Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894): “The fool saith, ‘Put not all thy eggs in one basket’ ... but the wise man saith, ‘Put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket! ’”

Example Sentences

As one European diplomat put it: “You have to be careful not to put all one’s eggs in one basket. U.S. elections can change things again.”

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I had become interested, with my friends of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, in building some railways in the Western States, but gradually withdrew from all such enterprises and made up my mind to go entirely contrary to the adage not to put all one's eggs in one basket.

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