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Who really said it

Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great

Not John D. Rockefeller — origin unknown Unknown Author unidentified · earliest located print credit: Kenny Rogers (1938–2020)
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Nobody has produced a source. The line is absent from Rockefeller’s own memoir, Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909) — searchable in full at Project Gutenberg ↗ — and the sites that circulate it name no speech, letter or book. Wikiquote files it under Disputed: the earliest printed instance it located credits country singer Kenny Rogers, and no attribution to Rockefeller appears until 2006 Wikiquote, Disputed ↗. Rogers is the oldest credit, not a proven author — so the honest answer is unknown.

Last verified 30 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great” Author unknown. Widely credited to John D. Rockefeller with no source — it is not in his 1909 memoir. The earliest located print credit is to Kenny Rogers, and no Rockefeller attribution appears before 2006.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to John D. Rockefeller. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the themes of courage, change and success. Theme: "Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great". 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 "Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great". 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

Origin
Unknown — no located first use
Earliest print credit
Kenny Rogers, in a 1990s quotation anthology
First Rockefeller credit
Not until 2006, in a business networking handbook
Rockefeller source
None — not in Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1909)

Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. No source in Rockefeller

There is no fuller passage to show, because there is no passage — the line only ever appears as a free-standing motto. One wrinkle worth flagging: Wikiquote’s note dates its earliest Google Books hit to 1993, while Google Books’ own record for the volume Wikiquote links gives a publication date of April 1990. Either way the trail begins in a 1990s quotation anthology crediting Kenny Rogers, not in anything Rockefeller wrote.

Wikiquote — filed under Disputed

How we traced it

  • The anchor is Wikiquote, which does not list this line among Rockefeller’s quotes at all — it files it under Disputed, noting that the earliest citation it found in Google Books is from 1993, where the line is credited to country-music singer Kenny Rogers, and that it is not found attributed to Rockefeller until 2006 the Disputed entry ↗.
  • We followed both volumes Wikiquote links. The earliest one is Words of Wisdom, an advice-and-quotation anthology compiled by William Safire and Leonard Safir for Simon and Schuster Google Books record ↗. The first Rockefeller credit sits in Networking in 90 Minutes by Lindsay Bannerman, published by White Finance Ltd in 2006 Google Books record ↗. Both are books repeating a credit, which is not the same thing as a source.
  • We searched Rockefeller’s end ourselves. His memoir Random Reminiscences of Men and Events — Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909, copyright 1908 and 1909 — is online in full, and it contains no ‘give up the good’, no ‘go for the great’ and no ‘afraid to give’ the full text ↗. Rockefeller died in 1937; the line has no printed life under any name until the 1990s.
  • The specialists have not rescued it either. Quote Investigator has traced four separate sayings pinned on Rockefeller — blood in the streets, compound interest, the pessimist and the optimist, and ‘I believe the market is going to fluctuate’ — and this is not one of them QI’s Rockefeller file ↗. Wikiquote’s Kenny Rogers page ↗ does not carry the line either, so even the oldest credit has nothing behind it.

We cannot state a rights position, because we cannot state an author or a first publication. The earliest appearances anyone has located are in modern, in-copyright books — a Simon and Schuster anthology and a 2006 networking handbook — and both of those are repeating the line, not originating it. So do not treat this as public domain on the strength of Rockefeller’s 1839–1937 dates: nothing ties it to him or to any pre-1931 work. Quote it in a talk or a card; do not print it on merchandise under a dead man’s name. This is not legal advice.

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 attribution problem

This is a motivational-poster line wearing a robber baron’s name. Rockefeller is the perfect host for it — rich, ruthless, dead, and permanently associated with reinvesting profits — but the paper trail runs the other way, and it does not start with him.

Not John D. Rockefeller no source

Wikiquote does not list it among his quotes; it sits in the Disputed section with no Rockefeller attribution located before 2006 the entry ↗. It is also absent from his own memoir, and none of the business sites repeating it cite a speech, letter or book — one concedes that “attribution can vary across sources” an example ↗.

Kenny Rogers — earliest, still unproven credit, not a source

Wikiquote’s earliest Google Books instance credits the country singer Wikiquote ↗, and quotation sites still list a shorter form under his name. But an anthology repeating a credit is not evidence he wrote it, and his own Wikiquote page ↗ does not include it.

A 2006 networking handbook first sighting

The oldest Rockefeller attribution anyone has located is in Networking in 90 Minutes by Lindsay Bannerman, White Finance Ltd, 2006 Google Books ↗. From there it spread through quote databases, where Goodreads now carries it under his name with no source at all Goodreads ↗.

Jim Collins — 'Good is the enemy of great' related, later, real

The sentiment’s best-known respectable version is Collins’s own line from Good to Great, which he states plainly and which is properly his Collins on it ↗. It is a much later formulation than the anonymous motto on this page, but it is why the idea now reads as business scripture.

Unknown. The oldest credit belongs to Kenny Rogers, the Rockefeller credit begins in 2006, and Rockefeller’s own book does not contain the words the trail ↗.

Context

Why it sticks

The line works because it names a real and uncomfortable trade. Most people are not choosing between failure and success; they are choosing between something that already works and something that might work better, and the thing that already works is the harder one to walk away from. Naming ‘the good’ as the obstacle is the whole trick.

It also explains the Rockefeller magnetism. Reinvesting rather than banking a profit is the single idea most associated with him, so a motto about surrendering a comfortable return sounds like something he would say — which is exactly the mechanism by which unsourced aphorisms acquire famous owners.

Naming ‘the good’ as the obstacle is the whole trick.

Why a famous name gets attached to a sourceless line

A motto with no author looks weak on a slide. A motto with a titan’s name looks like evidence, so a name gets supplied.

The name supplied is nearly always someone the audience already accepts on the subject. For money and ambition in English, that means Rockefeller, Ford or Carnegie.

The direction of travel here is unusual and instructive: the line lost a living, checkable credit (a singer, in a 1990s anthology) and gained a dead, unfalsifiable one.

‘Unknown’ is the correct answer, and it is more useful than a confident wrong one — particularly if you were about to print it.

Explore

Filed under

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

Courage Change Success

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.

John D. Rockefeller — Disputed sectionen.wikiquote.org

The anchor: files the line as disputed, dates the earliest Google Books citation to 1993 crediting Kenny Rogers, and finds no Rockefeller attribution before 2006.
Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1909), full textgutenberg.org

Rockefeller's own memoir, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909 — searchable, and it contains no form of this line.
Words of Wisdom — the volume behind the earliest creditbooks.google.com

The anthology Wikiquote links for the earliest instance: compiled by William Safire and Leonard Safir for Simon and Schuster.
Networking in 90 Minutes — the first Rockefeller creditbooks.google.com

Lindsay Bannerman, White Finance Ltd, 2006 — the volume Wikiquote links as the earliest located attribution to Rockefeller.
Quote Investigator: John D. Rockefeller filequoteinvestigator.com

Four Rockefeller attributions traced in detail — and this line is not among them, which is why Wikiquote is the best available research.
The quote as circulated under Rockefeller's namegoodreads.com

A community-added entry with no source cited, showing how the 2006 credit became the default.

The name it gets pinned to

Why it gets pinned on Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

1839–1937 · Founder of Standard Oil; philanthropist

John Davison Rockefeller founded and led the Standard Oil Company and then gave away a fortune through the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and the University of Chicago. He did write about his own career — Random Reminiscences of Men and Events, published by Doubleday, Page & Company in 1909 — which is why this attribution is easy to test, and why it fails: the book is online in full and the words are not in it. What he is remembered for, ploughing returns back into the business rather than pocketing them, is close enough to the sentiment that the misattribution feels plausible; feels plausible is not a source.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Unknown; credited to Kenny Rogers before Rockefeller

No primary source. Wikiquote, “John D. Rockefeller,” Disputed section, records the earliest Google Books citation as 1993, where the line is credited to Kenny Rogers, and finds no attribution to Rockefeller until 2006 (Lindsay Bannerman, Networking in 90 Minutes, White Finance Ltd, 2006). The phrase does not appear in John D. Rockefeller, Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/dont-be-afraid-to-give-up-the-good-to-go-for-the-great/

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