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Who really said it

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut

Attributed to Ernest Hemingway 1899–1961 · American novelist and short-story writer
Attributed In copyright

Hemingway is widely and credibly credited with this line, which is said to come from a private letter of “rules for life” he sent to his publisher Charles Scribner Jr. in the 1950s. But that letter has never been published, the evidence is second-hand — Malcolm Forbes printed it in 1961, Scribner recalled it in a 1990 memoir — and the two accounts word it differently, so no primary source pins this exact phrasing.

Last verified 4 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut” attributed to Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), reportedly from a letter of "rules for life" sent to his publisher Charles Scribner Jr. in the 1950s. The letter has never been published; the earliest documented printing is Forbes magazine, September 1961. Charles Scribner Jr.'s own 1990 memoir words it "what you said you'd do when you were drunk." Attributed, not verified. Via Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Ernest Hemingway estate (the underlying letter); Charles Scribner Jr. and Charles Scribner’s Sons (the 1990 memoir wording)). 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 world of Ernest Hemingway — American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Theme: "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut". 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 "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut". 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 letter nobody has published

Claimed source
Private letter of “rules for life” to publisher Charles Scribner Jr., 1950s
Earliest printing
Forbes magazine, September 1961 (per Quote Investigator)
Cited book
In the Company of Writers: A Life in Publishing, p. 64
Status
Letter text unpublished; wording varies between accounts

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. Letter text unpublished

No fuller original context exists in print. Quote Investigator records the September 1961 Forbes printing with a colon — “…do drunk: That will teach you to keep your mouth shut” — while Charles Scribner Jr.’s own 1990 memoir gives “…what you said you’d do when you were drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut!”

Quote Investigator: the full chronology, 1961 to 1993

Paper trail

  • September 1961 — the first printing. Malcolm S. Forbes wrote in Forbes that Hemingway closed a letter to Charles Scribner with a list of rules, the first being “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk: That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” Forbes never explained how he learned the letter’s contents — Quote Investigator lays out the chronology ↗.
  • 1961–1964 — the wording drifts. QI records reprints in the Atlantic Coast Line News within weeks and in The Berkshire Eagle of 2 January 1962, a “big mouth shut” variant in 1963 newspapers, and a further rephrasing in Bennett Cerf’s syndicated column of 25 April 1964 — all documented in QI’s chronology ↗.
  • 1990 — the recipient speaks. Charles Scribner Jr. quoted the rule in his memoir In the Company of Writers: A Life in Publishing, page 64. The book was published in New York by Scribner in 1990 — catalogue record at the Internet Archive ↗. Wikiquote cites this page in its sourced Hemingway section ↗.
  • Still not in the scholarly edition. The Cambridge edition of Hemingway’s letters — roughly 7,000 letters, about 85 percent previously unpublished, in a projected seventeen volumes — had reached June 1936 with Volume 6 in May 2024, per the Hemingway Letters Project ↗. The 1950s Scribner letter is not yet in print there.
In copyright

This is not a pre-1931 published work. The line is said to come from a private Hemingway letter of the 1950s whose earliest documented printing is Forbes in September 1961, and the fullest citable version appears in a memoir published in 1990. Both are comfortably inside US copyright, and an author’s unpublished letters remain the property of the estate — so treat this as in-copyright, not 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

What gets garbled

Nobody serious credits this line to the wrong person — the problem is the words themselves. Because the underlying letter has never been printed, every version in circulation is somebody’s memory of it, and they differ.

“…what you said you’d do when you were drunk” variant

This longer phrasing is the one Charles Scribner Jr. gave in his own 1990 memoir In the Company of Writers, page 64, and repeated in a 1993 book. Since Scribner was the man who received the letter, his version has a real claim — but Quote Investigator says plainly that it is uncertain which version is more accurate ↗.

“…keep your big mouth shut” variant

An extra word crept in almost immediately. QI records the “big mouth” form in 1963 newspapers including The Salinas Californian and The Pensacola News ↗, and a further rephrasing in Bennett Cerf’s syndicated column of 25 April 1964.

Shared with no source at all unsourced

The version most people meet online carries Hemingway’s name and nothing else. Goodreads hosts it with thousands of likes and no book cited ↗, noting that its quotes are community-added and not verified.

The honest position: Quote Investigator concludes there is substantive evidence Hemingway wrote a comment of this type ↗ to Charles Scribner in the 1950s — but the letter is unpublished, so the exact sentence is a reconstruction, not a transcription.

Context

Why this one is hard to nail down

Charles Scribner Jr. took over Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1952, on the death of his father. Hemingway — a Scribner author since The Sun Also Rises in 1926, and by then the firm’s most famous name — wrote the new boss a long personal letter that, according to everyone who has described it, closed with a short list of rules for living. This was the first rule.

The trouble is that nobody has ever printed the letter. What survives is two people’s memory of it: Malcolm Forbes, who published a version in Forbes in September 1961 without ever explaining how he learned its contents, and Scribner himself, who quoted a slightly different version in his 1990 memoir. Both make Hemingway the author. Neither settles the words.

“Always do sober what you said you’d do when you were drunk” — the version Charles Scribner Jr. himself remembered.

Why the definitive edition can’t help yet

The Hemingway Letters Project is producing a scholarly edition of roughly 7,000 letters, about 85 percent of them never before published, in a projected seventeen volumes from Cambridge University Press. As of Volume 6, published in May 2024, the edition covers correspondence through June 1936.

A 1950s letter to Charles Scribner Jr. therefore falls well beyond the published run. Until the edition reaches the 1950s — or the letter itself surfaces in the Scribner archive — the wording of this line rests on the recollections of two men, printed twenty-nine years apart, that do not quite match.

Explore

Filed under

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

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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 Origin: Always Do Sober What You Said You’d Do Drunkquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Traces the line from Forbes in September 1961 through 1963 newspaper variants, Bennett Cerf’s 1964 column and Scribner’s 1990 and 1993 memoirs.
Ernest Hemingway — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line in its main sourced Quotes section, citing the “rules for life” sent to Charles Scribner IV and Scribner’s memoir, page 64.
In the Company of Writers: A Life in Publishingarchive.org

Catalogue record for Charles Scribner Jr.’s 1990 memoir — the book both QI and Wikiquote cite for the wording.
The Hemingway Letters Projecthemingwaysociety.org

Status of the Cambridge scholarly edition of Hemingway’s letters: seventeen projected volumes, published through June 1936 as of Volume 6 in May 2024.
Charles Scribner IVen.wikipedia.org

The recipient. Confirms he was also known as Charles Scribner Jr., lived 1921–1995, and succeeded his father as head of the firm in 1952.
Ernest Hemingwayen.wikipedia.org

Biography: born 21 July 1899, died 2 July 1961; Pulitzer Prize 1953, Nobel Prize in Literature 1954; a Scribner’s author from 1926 onward.

About the author

The man on the letterhead

Ernest Hemingway

1899–1961 · American novelist, short-story writer and journalist

Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea, and from 1926 onward published everything with one house, Charles Scribner’s Sons. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. His reputation as a heroic drinker is exactly why lines like this one stick to his name so easily — and why they deserve checking.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

How to cite this

Earliest documented printing per Quote Investigator: Malcolm S. Forbes in Forbes magazine, September 1961. See Quote Investigator, "Quote Origin: Always Do Sober What You Said You'd Do Drunk. That Will Teach You To Keep Your Mouth Shut," June 10, 2022. Compare Charles Scribner Jr., In the Company of Writers: A Life in Publishing (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990), 64.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/always-do-sober-what-you-said-youd-do-drunk-that-will-teach/

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