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Who really said it

Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine

Marx — but not in these words, and not about trust Karl Marx 1818–1883 · German philosopher, economist and journalist
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Marx wrote no such sentence. Thanking a correspondent in Bordeaux for a gift of wine on 12 November 1866, he wrote that he inclined “somewhat to old Luther’s view that a man who does not love wine will never be good for anything” — and then added, in the same breath, “(There are exceptions to every rule.)” The letter survives in full ↗. The popular line swaps worthlessness for untrustworthiness, drops Luther, and drops the exception; Wikiquote lists it as misattributed ↗.

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

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine” Karl Marx never wrote "Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine." What he wrote, to François Lafargue on 12 November 1866, was: "I even incline somewhat to old Luther's view that a man who does not love wine will never be good for anything. (There are exceptions to every rule.)" — Marx/Engels Collected Works, vol. 42, p. 334. Via Quotle.info

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In context

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Provenance

The letter it was rewritten from

Work
Letter to François Lafargue in Bordeaux
Written
London, 12 November 1866
Original language
French; first published in Annali, Milan, 1958
Translation
English text as printed in Marx/Engels Collected Works, vol. 42, p. 334

My sincere thanks for the wine. Being myself from a winegrowing region, and former owner of a vineyard, I know a good wine when I come across one. I even incline somewhat to old Luther’s view that a man who does not love wine will never be good for anything. (There are exceptions to every rule.) But one cannot, for example, deny that the political movement in England has been spurred on by the commercial treaty with France and the import of French wines. Second paragraph of the letter

The paraphrase keeps the wine and drops everything that qualifies it: the credit to Luther, the actual subject (a man’s worth, not his honesty), and Marx’s own parenthesis.

The full letter to François Lafargue, 12 November 1866

How we know

No rights status can honestly be assigned to the popular sentence, because it has no identifiable author, work or date — it is an anonymous rewrite. The letter behind it is a separate question: Marx wrote it in French in 1866 and it was first published in Annali (Milan) in 1958, while the English wording quoted here is the translation printed in the Marx/Engels Collected Works, whose copyright Lawrence & Wishart hold — which is why the Marxists Internet Archive removed all MECW material from its site on 30 April 2014 ↗.

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 happened to it

This one is unusual. Most quotes pinned on Marx are inventions with nothing underneath them; this one has a real sentence underneath, rewritten far enough to say something he did not say.

Nobody — it has no traceable author rewritten

Quote sites print the sentence bare. The AZQuotes entry ↗ carries Marx’s name and a row of topic tags — wine, food, drinking — and no book, letter, date or page at all. Wikiquote lists it under Misattributed ↗.

Marx credited it to Martin Luther borrowed

The letter does not offer the thought as Marx’s own: he says he inclines “somewhat to old Luther’s view” — see the letter ↗. Wikiquote reads the line as a restating of the “wine, women and song” proverb then attributed to Luther. That attribution does not hold either: the proverb first appears in print in 1775 ↗, more than two centuries after the 1536 table talk in which Luther said something loosely comparable.

Marx — but he was judging a man’s worth, not his honesty altered

“A man who does not love wine will never be good for anything” is a verdict on usefulness; “be careful to trust” turns it into a warning about character. The rewrite also loses what Marx wrote in the very next breath — “(There are exceptions to every rule.)” ↗

What Marx actually wrote, in French, from London on 12 November 1866: “I even incline somewhat to old Luther’s view that a man who does not love wine will never be good for anything. (There are exceptions to every rule.)” — letter to François Lafargue, Marx/Engels Collected Works, vol. 42, p. 334 ↗

Context

A thank-you note that turned political

The setting is domestic, not doctrinal. Marx was writing to François Lafargue in Bordeaux — the father of Paul Lafargue, who married Marx’s daughter Laura at St Pancras registry office in April 1868 ↗ — to apologise for months of silence and to thank him for a gift of wine. The credentials Marx offers are real ones: he was born in Trier in 1818, in Riesling country, and The World of Fine Wine notes that his family owned two small vineyards along the Ruwer at Mertesdorf ↗. “Former owner of a vineyard” is not a flourish.

Then, in the same paragraph, the letter swerves. Cheap French wine, Marx argues, had done English politics some good: the commercial treaty with France and the wine imports it brought had spurred the political movement along — one of the few useful things Louis Bonaparte managed, bought at the price of general demoralisation. The rest of the letter is a father-in-law-to-be at work: chasing missing paperwork for Paul’s application to the College of Surgeons, and asking François to tell his son to desist from propaganda in Paris, because “this is a dangerous time” and he would be the better fighter for holding himself in check.

I even incline somewhat to old Luther’s view that a man who does not love wine will never be good for anything.

Two shapes of the paraphrase, and who traced it first

The rewrite circulates in two forms. Quote sites give “Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine” — which, read literally, advises the opposite of what it means. The World of Fine Wine opens its essay on Marx, Engels and wine ↗ with the grammatically repaired version, “Be careful of trusting a person who does not like wine” — and then, further down, quotes the real letter. Neither wording is in it.

The trail back to the letter was walked in public. A thread on the Marxism mailing list ↗ asked where the wine line came from, and a participant produced the November 1866 passage — the same source Wikiquote now cites. Quote Investigator, which has looked into several sayings pinned on Marx, has no article on this one.

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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.

Karl Marx — Misattributeden.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s Misattributed section lists this exact sentence and names the 1866 letter, MECW volume and page behind it.
Letter to François Lafargue, 12 November 1866wikirouge.net

The complete English text of the letter, with a source note giving the MECW volume and page and recording that the original is French.
MECW File No Longer Availablemarxists.org

The Marxists Internet Archive notice explaining why its copy of this letter is gone: Lawrence & Wishart’s copyright in the English Collected Works, effective 30 April 2014.
Wine, women and songen.wikipedia.org

Traces the proverb Marx credited to “old Luther” and explains that the Luther attribution is erroneous, the phrase first reaching print in 1775.
Revolution in a Glass: Marx, Engels, and Wineworldoffinewine.com

An essay that opens with the paraphrase and later quotes the genuine letter, with detail on the Trier vineyards Marx grew up among.
Marx wine quote — Marxism list threadmarxism.csbs.utah.narkive.com

A mailing-list thread in which the saying is queried and tracked back to the November 1866 letter to Lafargue.

Whose letter this comes from

About Karl Marx

Karl Marx

1818–1883 · German philosopher, economist and journalist

Karl Marx was deep in the manuscript that would become Das Kapital when he broke off to write this thank-you note — he blames the book, and recurring illness, for months of unanswered post. He had been born in Trier in 1818, in the Mosel wine country, into a family that owned two small vineyards, and the wine talk in his letters is the talk of someone who grew up around it rather than a man reaching for a metaphor. What he did not do, here or anywhere else, was tell anyone to distrust a person who does not like wine.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Karl Marx to François Lafargue, London, 12 November 1866, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, vol. 42, p. 334; written in French and first published in Annali (Milan, 1958). The English sentence “Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine” appears in no work or letter of Marx’s and is listed as misattributed by Wikiquote.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine’?” Last verified 9 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/be-careful-to-trust-a-person-who-does-not-like-wine/

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