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Who really said it

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on

Neither Churchill nor Twain — a proverb three centuries old Unknown Anonymous proverb · ancestor in Jonathan Swift, 1710; boots by 1820
Disputed Free to reuse

This one is credited to two famous men, which is usually the sign that it belongs to neither. It does not. The ancestor is Jonathan Swift, in The Examiner in 1710: ‘Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.’ The clothing arrives in a Portland Gazette item of 1820 — falsehood flying from Maine to Georgia while truth pulls her boots on — and by the 1850s the preacher C. H. Spurgeon was quoting it as ‘the old Proverb.’ Twain died in 1910 and the credit to him is first seen in 1919. Churchill’s name attaches later still, and the closest real 20th-century match is Cordell Hull’s memoirs of 1948.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on” Not Churchill and not Mark Twain. An anonymous proverb; the ancestor is Jonathan Swift, 1710.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Winston Churchill. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Winston Churchill — British statesman, historian and Nobel laureate in Literature. Theme: "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on". 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 lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on". 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

The source

Ancestor
Jonathan Swift, The Examiner
Dated
1710
Boots first appear
Portland Gazette, 5 September 1820
Churchill / Twain source
None — neither has one

Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it. Jonathan Swift, The Examiner, 1710

Swift’s original, and much the best of them. There is no comic business with boots — just two verbs, flies and limps, and the awful implication that truth is not merely slower but injured. Three hundred years of retelling have made the saying funnier and considerably less bleak.

Quote Investigator — Swift 1710 through to the modern versions

How we traced it

  • Swift’s 1710 sentence in The Examiner is the root, and it has no footwear in it at all — falsehood flies, truth limps. Everything since is elaboration on that contrast, which is why no single later wording can be pinned to a single later author the chronology ↗.
  • The clothes arrive in America. In 1787 Thomas Francklin has falsehood flying on the wings of the wind; the Portland Gazette of 5 September 1820 has falsehood flying from Maine to Georgia while truth is pulling her boots on. That 1820 item is the first known appearance of the getting-dressed joke that the modern version depends on.
  • By the 1850s Charles Haddon Spurgeon is using it in print and calling it the old Proverb — a preacher telling his readers the line is already common property, seventy years before Twain was first credited with it. The Yale Book of Quotations carries his ‘a lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on’ from Gems from Spurgeon.
  • The modern wordings then drift: ‘lacing’ its boots in a 1921 instance, ‘shoes’ from 1924, ‘breeches’ in Cordell Hull’s memoirs in 1948, ‘pants’ in the American form quoted here. Richard Langworth points out the tell on the Churchill version: Churchill would have said trousers Langworth on the fake ↗.
Public domain

Swift (1710), the 1820 newspaper item and Spurgeon’s 1850s sermons are all long out of copyright, so the saying is free to reproduce in those forms. Two things to keep separate: Cordell Hull’s 1948 memoirs are a distinct modern book with their own status if you quote his ‘breeches’ sentence verbatim, and Churchill’s genuine writings remain in copyright via his estate until 2035 — but since this line is not his, that term does not reach it. Nor does anything of Twain’s, for the same reason. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

The attribution problem — twice over

Most misquotations have one false owner. This one has two, and they contradict each other: it cannot be both a British Prime Minister of the 1940s and an American humorist who died in 1910. The double credit is the strongest evidence available that it belongs to neither.

Not Winston Churchill no source; wrong vocabulary

Nothing in his speeches, books, letters or reported remarks. Richard Langworth attributes the ‘halfway round the world’ form to Cordell Hull’s 1948 memoirs and makes a nice philological point against the Churchill version: an Englishman of his generation says trousers, not pants or breeches Langworth ↗.

Not Mark Twain no source; and the dates are wrong

The Twain credit is first seen in 1919 — nine years after his death — and no version appears in his books, notebooks or letters. The Center for Mark Twain Studies, which fields ‘did he really say that?’ for a living, finds the modern saturation is a product of social media rather than of anything Twain wrote.

Cordell Hull, 1948 documented, but not the origin

Roosevelt’s Secretary of State wrote in his memoirs that a lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on. That is a real, citable, dated sentence — but it is 1948, and the proverb was already old when Spurgeon called it old in the 1850s.

Jefferson, Fisher Ames, John Randolph all unsupported

Each has been offered as author at some point and none has evidence behind them. A saying that attracts six candidate authors across three centuries is telling you it is a proverb.

It has no canonical form boots, shoes, breeches, pants

Truth pulls on boots (1820), laces them (1921), puts on shoes (1924), pulls on breeches (1948) and puts on its pants (American, modern). Searching for one of these will convince you the others do not exist. They all do.

An anonymous proverb, already old by the 1850s, descended from Jonathan Swift’s 1710 ‘Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.’ Neither Churchill nor Twain has a source for any version of it the chronology ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is the only proverb about misinformation that is itself a case of misinformation, and it has been demonstrating its own thesis for three hundred years. The lie about who said it has gone round the world several times; the correction is still doing up its laces.

The image does the work. Lies do not need to be dressed — they can leave the house immediately — while the truth has to be checked, sourced and made presentable before it can go anywhere. That is a genuinely good account of how corrections lose, and it is why the line survived being anonymous for so long before anyone gave it a celebrity.

It is credited to a Victorian American and a wartime Briton at once. That contradiction is the proof.

The proverb, century by century

1710: Jonathan Swift, The Examiner — falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.

1787: Thomas Francklin — falsehood flies on the wings of the wind.

5 September 1820: Portland Gazette, Maine — falsehood will fly from Maine to Georgia while truth is pulling her boots on.

1850s: C. H. Spurgeon quotes it in print and calls it ‘the old Proverb’.

1919: the first known credit to Mark Twain, nine years after his death.

1948: Cordell Hull’s memoirs — a lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.

Later 20th century onward: the Churchill credit spreads, in an American wording he would never have used.

Explore

Filed under

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

Truth Power

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.

A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoesquoteinvestigator.com

The full three-century chronology, and the finding that neither the Twain nor the Churchill credit has substantive support.
Galloping Lies — Langworth on the Churchill versionrichardlangworth.com

The Churchill quotation editor attributes the ‘halfway round the world’ form to Cordell Hull’s 1948 memoirs, not Churchill.
Colin Kaepernick incorrectly credits Churchill for lie quotepolitifact.com

A fact-check of the Churchill credit in the wild, with the historians’ verdict.
Who said 'A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on'?interestingliterature.com

A literary account of the Swift ancestry and of ‘Churchillian drift’, Nigel Rees’s name for this exact failure mode.

Popularly credited author

Why it gets pinned on Churchill — and on Twain

Winston Churchill

1874–1965 · British statesman, historian and Nobel laureate in Literature

Sir Winston Churchill and Mark Twain are the two great magnets of English misquotation, and this saying is one of the rare lines heavy enough to be pulled by both at once — Churchill because he ran a wartime propaganda machine and understood exactly how fast a falsehood moves, Twain because it sounds like a man leaning on a porch rail. Neither has a source. The quotation researcher Nigel Rees named the mechanism ‘Churchillian drift’: unclaimed good lines migrate towards the most famous plausible speaker. This one drifted twice, in two directions, which is why you will find it confidently signed by both men on the same afternoon.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Anonymous proverb. Ancestor: Jonathan Swift, The Examiner, 1710. ‘Boots’ form, Portland Gazette (Maine), 5 September 1820; called ‘the old Proverb’ by C. H. Spurgeon in the 1850s. No Churchill and no Mark Twain source exists.

MLA (9th ed.)

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.” Anonymous proverb; ancestor in Jonathan Swift, The Examiner, 1710.

APA (7th ed.)

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on. (1710). Anonymous proverb [ancestor: Jonathan Swift, The Examiner].

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on’?” Last verified 21 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-lie-gets-halfway-around-the-world

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