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Who really said it

Biggest damfool mistake I ever made

Unsourced — commonly credited to Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890–1969 · 34th President of the United States
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Eisenhower’s souring on Chief Justice Earl Warren is genuinely documented — the snappy sentence is not. No letter, diary entry, transcript or recording preserves him saying it; the citation trail reference works offer stops at a secondhand report in a 1968 magazine essay, and his biographer Jean Edward Smith wrote in 2012 that “Eisenhower never said that. I have no evidence that he ever made such a statement.”

Last verified 3 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“Biggest damfool mistake I ever made” Attributed to Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) on his appointment of Chief Justice Earl Warren — but undocumented. No letter, diary, transcript or recording preserves it; biographer Jean Edward Smith wrote in 2012, 'Eisenhower never said that. I have no evidence that he ever made such a statement.' TIME printed the line on 22 July 1974; reference works trace the attribution to a secondhand report in The New York Times Magazine, 28 July 1968. Via Quotle.info

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In context

Evoking the world of Dwight D. Eisenhower — Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, then 34th President of the United States. Theme: "Biggest damfool mistake I ever made". 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.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Biggest damfool mistake I ever made". 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

Where the line actually comes from

Credited to
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969)
Claimed occasion
A private remark on his appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice; Warren took the seat in October 1953
Primary source
None located — no letter, diary, transcript or recording
Earliest printing we verified
TIME, 22 July 1974

Biggest damfool mistake I ever made. No documented context

There is no transcript, letter or diary entry to quote from — the line circulates as a bare sentence with no surrounding words. The closest thing to a period setting is TIME’s account of 22 July 1974 ↗, which framed it this way: “Later, dismayed that Warren turned out to be a controversial participant rather than a bland umpire, Ike described the selection as ‘the biggest damn fool mistake I ever made.’” Note that even there the wording is “damn fool,” not the contracted “damfool” of the version usually quoted.

TIME, “Earl Warren’s Way: Is It Fair?” (22 July 1974)

How we verified this

  • A period printing exists: TIME told readers on 22 July 1974 ↗ that “Ike described the selection as ‘the biggest damn fool mistake I ever made.’” TIME gives no source for it.
  • Theo Lippman Jr. traced the family of Eisenhower-on-Warren quips for The Baltimore Sun on 7 September 1997 ↗ and found the documentary residue thin: Justice Harold Burton’s diary records only that Eisenhower “expressed disappointment at the trend of decisions of Chief Justice and Brennan,” while the Eisenhower Library “says it has found no corroboration of Eisenhower’s uttering such a quote, in that or any other instance.”
  • Wikipedia’s article on Earl Warren ↗ hedges the line to “some writers believe,” and footnotes Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace (Random House, 2012), p. 603n: “Eisenhower never said that. I have no evidence that he ever made such a statement.”
  • The Virginia Law Weekly, surveying the same competing versions on 17 October 2018 ↗, cited none of them to a source and concluded simply that “Historians argue whether or not Eisenhower ever said any of the above.”

No source work has ever been identified for this sentence — no speech, letter, diary or interview transcript — so there is nothing whose first-publication date could settle a copyright status. Quotle.info therefore asserts none; the fragment is reproduced here for identification and for commentary on the attribution itself.

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’s wrong with the attribution

The man is probably the right man; the sentence is the problem. Eisenhower really did sour on Earl Warren — but the crisp epigram everyone repeats has never been tied to anything he is recorded as saying.

“Biggest damfool mistake I ever made” No source

No document produces it. The citation trail assembled by reference works stops at Fred Rodell’s essay “The Complexities of Mr. Justice Fortas,” The New York Times Magazine, 28 July 1968, p. 12 — a law professor’s magazine piece reporting the remark, not Eisenhower saying it. (Wikiquote files the line under ‘Disputed’ ↗ with exactly that citation — adding that Eisenhower’s memoirs assistant William B. Ewald Jr. heard a different, blunter version at Gettysburg in 1961 — and a quotation database ↗ reproduces it too; Quotle.info was not able to read the 1968 article itself and does not vouch for what it contains.) Wikipedia’s Earl Warren article ↗ quotes biographer Jean Edward Smith’s verdict: “Eisenhower never said that.”

“damn fool” versus “damfool” Drifting text

Even the people repeating it cannot agree on the words. TIME in 1974 ↗ and American Heritage in 2003 ↗ print “damn fool” and “damn-fool”; the contracted “damfool” belongs to the reference-book version. A line with no fixed text is a line with no transcript behind it.

“I made two mistakes and both of them are sitting on the Supreme Court” No corroboration

Usually quoted alongside it, and no better founded. Theo Lippman Jr. reported for The Baltimore Sun ↗ that the Eisenhower Library “says it has found no corroboration of Eisenhower’s uttering such a quote, in that or any other instance,” and that the diary entry cited as its source says only that Eisenhower “expressed disappointment at the trend of decisions of Chief Justice and Brennan.”

Magazines and op-ed pages Repeated as fact

American Heritage ran it in its August/September 2003 issue ↗ as settled history with no source; George Parry opened a 2017 Philadelphia Inquirer commentary ↗ with the bare sentence. Neither says where Eisenhower said it.

The documented residue is smaller and duller than the epigram: Justice Harold Burton’s diary records only that Eisenhower “expressed disappointment at the trend of decisions of Chief Justice and Brennan,” and the Eisenhower Library reported finding no corroboration ↗ of the ‘two mistakes’ version.

Context

Why this one keeps getting quoted

It is the founding text of a whole genre of American political writing: the president who picks a judge and lives to regret it. Eisenhower gave Earl Warren the centre chair in October 1953 expecting a steady administrator, and got the court of Brown v. Board of Education. A one-sentence expression of buyer’s remorse is exactly what that story needs, so the story supplied one.

The underlying feeling is real enough — Eisenhower’s private impatience with Warren is attested by people who were around him. What is missing is the sentence. Almost every time it is printed, it is printed bare: no date, no room, no listener, no transcript. That is the signature of a line that grew in the retelling rather than one that was written down.

Eisenhower’s regret is real. The sentence isn’t sourced.

Read the full story

Warren took his seat as Chief Justice on 5 October 1953 under a recess appointment dated 2 October, and was confirmed by the Senate in March 1954; he served until 23 June 1969. Eisenhower died on 28 March 1969.

Two related remarks are better attested than the famous one, and neither is quotable in the same way. William B. Ewald Jr., who worked on Eisenhower’s memoirs, reported hearing him say at Gettysburg in 1961 that his two worst appointments came out of Justice Department recommendations, naming the head of the Antitrust Division and Earl Warren. And Justice Burton’s diary records only “disappointment at the trend of decisions.” Neither has ever displaced the tidier one-liner.

Explore

Filed under

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

Failure Doubt Leadership

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.

TIME: “Earl Warren’s Way: Is It Fair?” (1974)time.com

Period printing: TIME states that Ike described the selection as “the biggest damn fool mistake I ever made.”
Theo Lippman Jr., “Anecdotes are dangerous to biographers and truth”baltimoresun.com

1997 column on how the Eisenhower “two mistakes” anecdote grew; quotes Burton’s diary and reports the Eisenhower Library found no corroboration of that version.
Earl Warren — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Hedges the quote to “some writers believe” and footnotes Jean Edward Smith’s 2012 conclusion that Eisenhower never said it.
“Ike’s Mistake: The Accidental Creation of the Warren Court”lawweekly.org

Lays out the circulating versions of the remark and states that historians argue whether Eisenhower said any of them.
American Heritage: “Ike’s Biggest Damn-Fool Mistake”americanheritage.com

Frederic D. O’Brien’s 2003 piece — an example of the quote repeated as settled fact with no source given.
Carl M. Cannon on the Earl Warren quotationsrealclearpublicaffairs.com

Notes the shaky sourcing of the companion “two mistakes” line and points back to Burton’s 1957 diary as the documented version.

The man it is pinned on

Who Eisenhower actually was

Dwight D. Eisenhower

1890–1969 · Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, then 34th President of the United States

Dwight David Eisenhower commanded the Allied invasion of Europe before serving two terms in the White House, from January 1953 to January 1961. In October 1953 he installed California governor Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States — a court that went on to hand down Brown v. Board of Education and a run of decisions Eisenhower, a temperamental gradualist, found far bolder than he had bargained for. His private irritation with Warren is well attested; the pithy sentence the internet keeps handing him is not.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Best available citation

No primary source located. Earliest printing verified for this page: “The Law: Earl Warren’s Way: Is It Fair?” TIME, July 22, 1974. Reference works trace the attribution to Fred Rodell, “The Complexities of Mr. Justice Fortas,” The New York Times Magazine, July 28, 1968, p. 12 — a secondhand report. Contradicted by Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace (Random House, 2012), 603n.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Biggest damfool mistake I ever made’?” Last verified 3 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/biggest-damfool-mistake-i-ever-made/

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