Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

A pessimist is one who sees a disaster in every opportunity. An optimist sees opportunity in every disaster

Spoken by John D. Rockefeller 1839–1937 · Standard Oil founder and philanthropist; he was 85 when he said it
Printed in a newspaper while he was alive — though he did not coin the joke Free to reuse

This one is real. The Detroit Free Press of 2 March 1925, in a story headlined “John D. at 85 Plays Splendid Golf Game,” reports Rockefeller giving exactly this definition mid‑round, after a poor start on a difficult hole. What is not his is the invention: the pessimist/optimist antithesis was already circulating in newspapers years before, and Rockefeller’s contribution was swapping the usual word “difficulty” for the heavier “disaster.”

Last verified 6 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“A pessimist is one who sees a disaster in every opportunity. An optimist sees opportunity in every disaster” John D. Rockefeller, reported in "John D. at 85 Plays Splendid Golf Game," The Detroit Free Press, 2 March 1925, p. 3. He said it mid-round, aged 85. He did not coin the joke: the earliest clean version of the pessimist/optimist antithesis is a 1919 remark by Bertram Carr, Mayor of Carlisle. Verified via Quotle.info

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 John D. Rockefeller — American oil magnate, founder of Standard Oil, philanthropist. Theme: "A pessimist is one who sees a disaster in every opportunity. An optimist sees opportunity in every disaster". 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 pessimist is one who sees a disaster in every opportunity. An optimist sees opportunity in every disaster". 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

Reported in
The Detroit Free Press
Article
“John D. at 85 Plays Splendid Golf Game”
Date and page
2 March 1925 — starts p. 1, quote on p. 3, col. 6
Occasion
An offhand remark during a round of golf

In one round, after a poor start on a difficult hole, he gave a definition of an optimist and a pessimist. “A pessimist,” he said, “is one who sees a disaster in every opportunity. An optimist sees opportunity in every disaster.” Thereupon, Mr. Rockefeller took out his midiron and made such a recovery that he was able to get on a 45 yard dog hole.

Transcribed as it stands in Quote Investigator’s citation of the Free Press page. The final clause reads that way in the transcription; it looks like a garbled rendering of a dog-leg hole, and we have left it rather than silently correcting a period source.

Quote Investigator’s chronology, with the 1925 Free Press citation in full

How we traced it

  • The exact sentence is not a quote-book invention — it was printed while Rockefeller was alive and named him. The Detroit Free Press of 2 March 1925, under the headline “John D. at 85 Plays Splendid Golf Game,” reports him giving the definition mid-round; Quote Investigator transcribes the passage and cites it to start page 1, quote page 3, column 6 the chronology ↗.
  • It is not in his own book. His memoir Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909) contains no pessimist/optimist antithesis at all — a full-text search turns up nothing. The closest thing in it is a flat declaration: “I am naturally an optimist” searchable full text ↗.
  • Nor did he originate the thought. The same chronology puts the earliest clean statement of the antithesis in 1919, from Bertram Carr, Mayor of Carlisle, with fragments running back to 1895, and Quote Investigator tentatively ascribes the saying to Carr rather than to any of the famous names later attached to it same page ↗.
  • Worth noting what the reference works carry: Wikiquote’s John D. Rockefeller page has no pessimist/optimist line in any section — not under sourced, not under disputed, not under misattributed. On this one the newspaper record is ahead of the quotation books, not behind them Wikiquote ↗.
Public domain

The wording is documented in The Detroit Free Press of 2 March 1925. A United States newspaper published in 1925 is in the public domain in the US, so both the article and the remark it transcribes are free to quote and reproduce. Rockefeller’s 1909 memoir, linked here as a cross-check, is likewise public domain.

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

The tangle around it

The attribution here is unusually clean — but this sentence sits inside a family of near-identical sayings that is one of the messiest on the internet, and the confusion runs in both directions.

Winston Churchill Red herring

“The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” is credited to Churchill everywhere, and there is no substantive evidence he said it. Richard M. Langworth, editor of Churchill By Himself, placed it in an appendix titled “Red Herrings: False Attributions”; the Churchill credit does not appear in Quote Investigator’s record until a 1979 quotation book the chronology ↗.

John D. Rockefeller Not the originator

Rockefeller said this wording in 1925, but he did not invent the antithesis. Quote Investigator’s earliest strong match is an 1919 remark by Bertram Carr, Mayor of Carlisle, and QI tentatively ascribes the saying to him — with fragments running back to 1895 same chronology ↗.

L. P. Jacks 1929

Edwin Mims’s 1929 book Adventurous America: A Study of Contemporary Life and Thought credited the educator and minister L. P. Jacks with a similar formulation — one more stop on a line that kept being re-assigned to whoever had said it most recently the chronology ↗.

John D. Rockefeller Different sentence

“I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity” circulates alongside this quote and is frequently quoted as though it were the same remark. It is a separate sentence, and it is not in his 1909 memoir Random Reminiscences of Men and Events, whose full text contains no such phrasing searchable full text ↗.

Rockefeller really did say this exact sentence — on a golf course, aged 85, in a story printed on 2 March 1925. What he supplied was the word “disaster.” The joke itself was already public property, and its earliest clean documented form belongs to a mayor of Carlisle in 1919 Quote Investigator ↗.

Context

Why it stuck

The setting matters. This is not a boardroom aphorism or a line from a memoir — it is a golf story. The Detroit Free Press reporter watching Rockefeller in March 1925 recorded that he made a poor start on a difficult hole, offered his definition of a pessimist and an optimist, and then took out his midiron and played the recovery. The quip came with a demonstration attached, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes a reported remark believable and helps it travel.

The idea, though, was already public property. By 1925 the pessimist/optimist antithesis had been knocking around print for three decades in a dozen shapes — calamity, obstacle, difficulty. Rockefeller’s edit was one word: he made it disaster. Coming from the man who had taken the news of a record antitrust fine in 1907 without leaving the golf course, that is the version that stuck to his name.

He gave the definition after a poor start on a difficult hole — then took out his midiron and made the recovery.

The chain the line came out of

Quote Investigator’s chronology runs like this: a fragment in The Illustrated American in 1895 (“one man’s calamity is another’s opportunity”); partial versions in 1903; the earliest clean statement of the full antithesis in 1919, from Bertram Carr, Mayor of Carlisle; then a Rev. F. W. Cole version in 1921, newspaper “obstacle” variants in 1922, an “opportunity in every difficulty” version in 1923 — and then Rockefeller’s “disaster” version in 1925, with L. P. Jacks credited with a similar formulation in 1929 the chronology ↗.

The tell that nobody owned it: in 1942 H. L. Mencken put a “calamity” version into A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles and marked the author as unidentified. The Churchill credit that dominates the internet today does not surface in QI’s record until a 1979 quotation book same chronology ↗.

There is a real Rockefeller sentence in the same key, and it is in his own book. Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1909) contains no pessimist/optimist epigram anywhere, but it does contain him saying plainly: “I am naturally an optimist” full text ↗.

Explore

Filed under

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

Hope Character Wisdom

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.

Quote Investigator: the full chronologyquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor research. Dates every version from 1895 to 1999, transcribes the 1925 Detroit Free Press passage with page and column, and settles the Churchill question.
Wikiquote: John D. Rockefelleren.wikiquote.org

Useful as a negative check — the reference page carries no pessimist/optimist line in any section, sourced, disputed or misattributed.
Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1909), full textgutenberg.org

Rockefeller’s own memoir, searchable. No pessimist/optimist epigram anywhere in it — but it does contain “I am naturally an optimist.”
Random Reminiscences — scanned 1909 editionarchive.org

Page images of the Doubleday, Page & Company 1909 printing, for anyone who wants to check the memoir against the original rather than a transcription.
John D. Rockefelleren.wikipedia.org

Biography and dates: born 8 July 1839, died 23 May 1937; ran Standard Oil to 1897, president in name to 1911, and a lifelong golfer.

The man who said it

John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

1839–1937 · American oil magnate, founder of Standard Oil, philanthropist

Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company and ran it until 1897, keeping the nominal title of president until 1911 and remaining its largest shareholder long after he had stopped managing it. He was in full retirement by his early sixties and spent his last decades on philanthropy and on golf — the pastime that produced this remark, and that he was famously playing in 1907 when a telegram arrived announcing a record fine against Standard Oil. He was 85 and living the golf-course half of that life when a Detroit Free Press reporter took down his definition of an optimist.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this

John D. Rockefeller, quoted in “John D. at 85 Plays Splendid Golf Game,” The Detroit Free Press (Detroit, MI), March 2, 1925, start page 1, quote page 3, column 6. Chronology and transcription: Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: A Pessimist Sees the Difficulty in Every Opportunity; an Optimist Sees the Opportunity in Every Difficulty,” July 26, 2017.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A pessimist is one who sees a disaster in every opportunity. An optimist sees opportunity in every disaster’?” Last verified 6 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-pessimist-is-one-who-sees-a-disaster-in-every-opportunity/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied