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Who really said it

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel

Not in these words — a later paraphrase Robert Frost 1874–1963 · American poet, four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry
Disputed In copyright

Frost really did make this joke, but he made it in verse: in “The Lesson for Today,” read at Harvard on 20 June 1941 and collected in A Witness Tree (1942), his speaker calls himself liberal and explains that he is so altruistically moral he never takes his own side in a quarrel. The polished prose sentence people quote — with “too broadminded” — is documented nowhere in Frost; the earliest citation in Barry Popik’s chronology is the Chicago Tribune of 30 November 1966, after Frost’s death in January 1963.

Last verified 9 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel” Robert Frost made this joke in verse, in "The Lesson for Today," read before Harvard's Phi Beta Kappa Society on 20 June 1941 and collected in A Witness Tree (Henry Holt, 1942), where his speaker says he is so altruistically moral he never takes his own side in a quarrel. The familiar prose wording — "A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel" — is not documented from Frost; the earliest citation in Barry Popik's chronology is the Chicago Tribune, 30 November 1966, after Frost's death on 29 January 1963. Via Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights presumed held by The Estate of Robert Frost; Henry Holt and Company, original publisher of A Witness Tree (1942)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the themes of character, doubt and courage. Theme: "A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

What Frost actually wrote

Poem
The Lesson for Today
First read
Phi Beta Kappa Society, Harvard University — 20 June 1941
Collected in
A Witness Tree (Henry Holt and Company, 1942)
The prose wording
No documented Frost source; earliest citation in Barry Popik’s chronology is the Chicago Tribune, 30 November 1966

I mean so altruistically moral
I never take my own side in a quarrel. The line Frost actually wrote

Two lines from “The Lesson for Today,” in which Frost’s speaker — a modern poet sparring with a medieval one — calls himself a liberal and then defines the word against himself. Only the couplet is quoted here: the poem is still in copyright.

Barry Popik’s dated chronology of the saying

How we checked

  • Frost read “The Lesson for Today” before Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society on 20 June 1941; the poem’s speaker calls himself liberal and says he is so altruistically moral he never takes his own side in a quarrel (poem text and reading date ↗).
  • Wikiquote carries the popular wording in the chronological 1960s part of its Frost page, citing Harvey Shapiro’s “Story of the Poem” in The New York Times of 15 January 1961 and Guy Davenport’s The Geography of the Imagination (1981), and noting an earlier unattributed version in William Ernest Hocking’s What Man Can Make of Man (1942) (Wikiquote: Robert Frost ↗).
  • Barry Popik transcribes that same January 1961 column and the January 1962 St. Petersburg Times report with different wordings, and dates the exact “too broad-minded” sentence to the Chicago Tribune of 30 November 1966 (The Big Apple, 6 December 2009 ↗).
  • Frost died on 29 January 1963 — before the familiar wording appears anywhere in that record (Robert Frost, Wikipedia ↗).
In copyright

The verse quoted here is Frost’s own, from “The Lesson for Today,” first collected in A Witness Tree (Henry Holt and Company, 1942), whose United States copyright was renewed (R464848) and runs to 2038 — which is why the Internet Archive’s scan is lending-restricted. The familiar prose sentence has no documented source at all, so nothing about it can be called public domain either.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Right name, wrong sentence

This is not a fabricated Frost quote — it is a rewritten one. The joke is genuinely his; the sentence is not.

Robert Frost reworded

Every wording actually recorded from Frost is different. His verse line has him so altruistically moral he never takes his own side in a quarrel; Popik’s January 1961 and January 1962 newspaper citations give “a person who can’t take his own side in a quarrel” and “an extreme liberal is a man who can’t take his own side in a quarrel.” None of them contains “too broadminded” (citation trail ↗).

Barry Goldwater misattributed

Wikiquote’s talk page lists the exact popular wording among unsourced Frost quotations with the note that it is “Sometimes attributed to Barry Goldwater” — a second credit with no documentation behind it either (Wikiquote talk page ↗).

William Ernest Hocking unresolved

Hocking’s What Man Can Make of Man (1942) quotes the taunt as something already in circulation rather than as anyone’s line, which is why researchers describe the origin as uncertain instead of crediting Frost with inventing it. Hocking’s book appeared the year after Frost’s Harvard reading, so it neither confirms nor rules out Frost (Wikiquote’s note ↗).

Frost made the joke — in verse, at Harvard, in June 1941. The smooth prose sentence pinned to him online has never been traced to anything he wrote or said, and its earliest recorded appearance comes years after he died (Barry Popik, The Big Apple ↗).

Context

Why the poem matters more than the quip

On 20 June 1941 Frost read “The Lesson for Today” before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard University. It is a mock-quarrel in rhymed couplets between a modern poet and a medieval one, and in the middle of it Frost’s speaker turns the joke on himself: he calls himself liberal, tells the aristocrat he is arguing with that the word will not mean what he expects, and then defines it as being so altruistically moral that he never takes his own side in a quarrel. The poem went into A Witness Tree the following year, the collection that brought Frost his fourth Pulitzer Prize (poem text and reading date ↗).

Frost kept using the gag in conversation for the rest of his life. Barry Popik’s chronology records him deploying it in January 1961 while talking about John F. Kennedy — whom Frost felt was not that kind of liberal — and again in January 1962. The January 1961 citation is Harvey Shapiro’s column in The New York Times of the 15th, five days before Frost stood at Kennedy’s inauguration; Popik transcribes the wording there as a liberal being a person who can’t take his own side in a quarrel (The Big Apple chronology ↗).

Frost made the joke. He just never made it in these words.

The wrinkle that keeps the origin open

Even Frost’s claim to have invented the gibe is not settled. The philosopher William Ernest Hocking’s What Man Can Make of Man (1942) refers to it as an existing taunt — that a man may be so very liberal he cannot bring himself to take his own side in a quarrel — without crediting anyone, which is why Popik and Wikiquote both stop short of naming Frost as the originator. Hocking’s book appeared the year after Frost’s Harvard reading, so it does not settle the question in either direction (Wikiquote’s note on Hocking ↗).

The wording drifted steadily. Popik’s citations run from “a person who can’t take his own side in a quarrel” in 1961, through “someone who can’t take his own side in an argument” and “an extreme liberal is a man who can’t take his own side in a quarrel,” to the tighter “too broad-minded” construction in 1966 and a blunter “won’t take his own side in a fight” by the late 1980s. What circulates today is the most quotable link in that chain, not the first.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Character Doubt Courage

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Big Apple: chronology of the sayingbarrypopik.com

Barry Popik’s dated citation trail, 1942–2005, including Frost’s own January 1961 and January 1962 wordings and the 1966 first appearance of the familiar sentence.
Wikiquote: Robert Frosten.wikiquote.org

Lists the popular wording with its sourcing notes, and separately cites “The Lesson for Today” under A Witness Tree (1942).
Wikiquote talk page: unsourced Frost quotesen.wikiquote.org

Carries the exact popular wording in the “Unsourced” list, with the note that it is sometimes attributed to Barry Goldwater.
“The Lesson for Today” — the liberal couplet, and the reading datearchive.thinkprogress.org

Quotes the liberal couplet and the epitaph lines, and gives the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa reading date of 20 June 1941.
A Witness Tree (Henry Holt, 1942)archive.org

Scan of the collection that first printed the poem; the book is in copyright, so Internet Archive access is lending-restricted.
Robert Frost — biographyen.wikipedia.org

Life dates (26 March 1874 – 29 January 1963), the four Pulitzer Prizes, and the 20 January 1961 inauguration reading.

The poet behind the joke

Who Robert Frost was

Robert Frost

1874–1963 · American poet; four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry

Born in San Francisco on 26 March 1874 and long identified with rural New England, Robert Frost became the most publicly recognised American poet of his century, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times. He was a far more argumentative and politically sceptical writer than his plain-spoken reputation suggests — A Witness Tree (1942), which carried his fourth Pulitzer, includes the sparring, self-mocking poem this quip comes from. At eighty-six he stood at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration on 20 January 1961, unable to read the new poem he had written in the glare and reciting “The Gift Outright” from memory instead.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source & chronology

Robert Frost, “The Lesson for Today,” read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Harvard University, 20 June 1941; collected in A Witness Tree (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1942). The prose wording “A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel” is not documented in Frost; the earliest citation for it in Barry Popik, “A liberal is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel,” The Big Apple (6 December 2009), is the Chicago Tribune, 30 November 1966.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel’?” Last verified 9 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-liberal-is-a-man-too-broadminded-to-take-his-own-side-in/

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