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Who really said it

Do not go gentle into that good night

Written by Dylan Thomas 1914–1953 · Welsh poet
Verified In copyright

This is the true opening line and recurring refrain of Thomas’s villanelle of the same name, written in 1947 and first published in the journal Botteghe Oscure in 1951. The wording is genuine — and note the adjective “gentle,” not the adverb “gently.”

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“Do not go gentle into that good night” Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night" (written 1947; first published in Botteghe Oscure, 1951)

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas; New Directions Publishing (US) and J. M. Dent / Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK)). 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 Dylan Thomas — Welsh poet and writer. Theme: "Do not go gentle into that good night". 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 "Do not go gentle into that good night". 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

Work
Do not go gentle into that good night
Form
Villanelle (19 lines; five tercets and a quatrain)
Written
1947, while Thomas was in Florence
First published
Botteghe Oscure, 1951; collected in In Country Sleep, and Other Poems (1952)

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The opening tercet. The first and third lines return as alternating refrains throughout the poem and close it as a couplet.

Read the full poem at the Poetry Foundation

How we verified this

In copyright

First published in 1951 — comfortably after the 1931 line — so in the United States this poem remains in copyright (US-published works from 1951 run 95 years from publication). Thomas died in 1953, and the poem entered the public domain in most life-plus-70 countries on 1 January 2024, but not in the US.

Fact-check

The misquote everyone makes

The attribution here is not in doubt — the problem is the wording. The world’s favorite way to misquote this line is to “correct” Thomas’s grammar.

“Do not go gently into that good night” Common misquote

Countless quotations swap Thomas’s adjective “gentle” for the adverb “gently.” Read as a predicate adjective, “gentle” describes the person (do not go gentle, i.e. meek) rather than merely the manner of going — so the swap changes the sense, not just the grammar. Thomas’s wording is “gentle,” as Wikipedia’s article on the poem confirms.

Thomas really wrote it — and he wrote “gentle,” not “gently.” Check the authoritative text.

Context

Why it endures

Thomas wrote the villanelle in 1947, and it is widely read as a plea to his dying father to fight rather than surrender to death — though his father, D. J. Thomas, did not die until late 1952. The tight villanelle form, with its two hammering refrains, turns a private grief into a universal cry against mortality.

The poem has since saturated popular culture, from eulogies to films (memorably Interstellar), which is exactly why the slightly-off “gently” version circulates so widely.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Explore

Filed under

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

Mortality Resilience

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.

Do not go gentle into that good nighten.wikipedia.org

Article on the poem: form, 1947 composition, 1951 first publication in Botteghe Oscure, and later collections.
Full poem textpoetryfoundation.org

The Poetry Foundation’s authoritative full text of the poem.
Do not go gentle into that good nightpoets.org

Academy of American Poets full text, confirming the exact wording “gentle.”
About Dylan Thomaspoets.org

Academy of American Poets biography, noting the 1952 collection In Country Sleep, and Other Poems that first gathered the poem in book form.
The story behind the poemthemarginalian.org

Essay on the poem’s origin and Thomas’s own recorded reading.

The author

About Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

1914–1953 · Welsh poet and writer

Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914–1953) was a Welsh poet born in Swansea, celebrated for the musical intensity of his verse and his popular radio and stage work, including the “play for voices” Under Milk Wood. “Do not go gentle into that good night,” addressed to his ailing father, is his most quoted poem. He died in New York in 1953 at the age of 39.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” first published in Botteghe Oscure (1951); collected in In Country Sleep, and Other Poems (New York: New Directions, 1952) and Collected Poems, 1934–1952 (London: Dent, 1952).

MLA (9th ed.)

Thomas, Dylan. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” In Country Sleep, and Other Poems, New Directions, 1952.

APA (7th ed.)

Thomas, D. (1952). Do not go gentle into that good night. In In Country Sleep, and Other Poems. New Directions.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night

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