This proverb teaches you to be satisfied with enough because being too greedy or too ambitious will be your ruin.
Just as the pig that has been too greedy in eating, it has gotten big and fat and becomes a candidate for slaughter at hog-killing time. The pig that has eaten just enough will continue to be fed.
In business, the meaning is that it’s okay to make a profit, but when that profit is the result of price gouging or taking advantage of people, you’ll eventually lose in the end. Being a pig (eating) is good. Being a hog (overeating) is bad.
Just watch. Pigs get f[ed], hogs get slaughtered. When you try to take it too far, people turn the other way. I’m just telling you, when you’ve got a good thing and you get greedy, it always, always, always, always, always turns on you. That’s rule No. 1 of business.
Mark Cuban, talking about the NFL
Another misspelled version of the proverb that goes around is Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered., but the right word is fed.
The expression is coined by Rubbery Figures, a satirical rubber puppet series screened in Australia in the 1890s.