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Who really said it

Don't let yesterday use up too much of today

Not Will Rogers — an unsourced modern maxim Unknown — falsely credited to Will Rogers Origin undocumented · absent from Rogers’s complete 1922–1935 newspaper columns
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

There is no evidence Will Rogers ever said or wrote this. Wikiquote files the line in the Misattributed section of its Will Rogers page, with no citation, and we found no instance of it in the Will Rogers Memorial Museum’s own free online editions of his complete syndicated output — the six volumes of Weekly Articles (1922–1935) and the four-volume Daily Telegrams set (1926–1935), roughly 1.4 million words, searched in full. The same line, in its “take up” wording, also circulates as a John Wooden coaching maxim, but that credit is equally unsourced: no first publication has ever been documented for either man.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Don't let yesterday use up too much of today” Misattributed to Will Rogers — Wikiquote lists it among his misattributed sayings, and it appears nowhere in his complete 1922–1935 newspaper columns. Also credited, without a source, to John Wooden. True origin unknown.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Will Rogers. 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 time, change and hope. Theme: "Don't let yesterday use up too much of today". 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 let yesterday use up too much of today". 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 that isn’t there

Popular (wrong) credit
Will Rogers (1879–1935)
Wikiquote status
Misattributed — listed with no citation
Searched, no match
Weekly Articles, 6 vols. (1922–1935) & Daily Telegrams, 4 vols. (1926–1935)
Documented first use
None located — also credited, unsourced, to John Wooden

Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today. No source located

There is no original context to quote. The sentence circulates only as a standalone motivational line, with no located column, speech, book or date behind it — and in two competing wordings, “use up” and “take up.”

Wikiquote: Will Rogers, Misattributed section

How we verified this

  • Anchor: Wikiquote lists “Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.” in the Misattributed section of its Will Rogers page, with no supporting citation.
  • Primary check: we downloaded and searched the Will Rogers Memorial Museum’s free online editions of his complete syndicated output — Weekly Articles in six volumes (1922–1935) and the complete four-volume Daily Telegrams set, running to his final column, datelined 15 August 1935 and printed 16 August 1935. That is roughly 1.4 million words, and it contains no instance of the phrase or any near variant. (His six books and magazine pieces are not part of these volumes.)
  • The museum’s curated Will’s Quotes page does not include the line, and carries the notice that “Some quotes attributed to Will Rogers are falsely credited,” with contact details for its curator.
  • The same line, in its “take up” form, is presented as a John Wooden maxim on TheWoodenEffect.com — produced by SUCCESS magazine with the John R. Wooden family — and in Wooden’s Wisdom, but neither supplies a book, speech or date, so that credit rests on no firmer footing than the Rogers one.

Because no first publication has ever been identified for this sentence, its copyright status cannot be determined, and no public-domain claim should be made for it. Had it genuinely been Rogers’s it would very likely be public domain — his columns ran from 1922 to August 1935, much of that output published before 1931 — but the line is absent from those columns, and the competing John Wooden credit would point instead to a much later, still-in-copyright text.

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

How the misattribution works

This is a floating motivational one-liner with two famous homes and no documented parent. Both credits are assertion rather than evidence, and the wording is not even stable between them.

Will Rogers misattributed

Wikiquote lists the line in the Misattributed section of its Will Rogers page, with no citation. Quote databases carry it under his name with no source at all — Goodreads hosts it while noting that its quotes are added by the community and are not verified.

Rogers’s published columns absent

We searched the Will Rogers Memorial Museum’s free online editions of the complete Weekly Articles (six volumes, 1922–1935) and the complete four-volume Daily Telegrams set (1926–1935) — roughly 1.4 million words — and the phrase does not occur in any form. The museum’s own curated Will’s Quotes page does not carry it either, and states that “Some quotes attributed to Will Rogers are falsely credited.”

John Wooden unsourced

The same line, in its “take up” wording, is promoted as a maxim of the UCLA basketball coach on TheWoodenEffect.com, produced by SUCCESS magazine in cooperation with the John R. Wooden family, and in the Wooden’s Wisdom newsletter. Neither names a book, speech or date, so Wooden is best described as a prominent user of the line, not a documented author of it.

Two competing versions variant

“Use up” and “take up” both circulate under Rogers’s name — Goodreads hosts the ‘use up’ and ‘take up’ forms as two separate Rogers entries. Unstable wording with no source text behind it is a standard signature of an orphan quotation.

Verdict: not Will Rogers. Wikiquote files it as misattributed, and it appears nowhere in his complete published columns. Whoever wrote it has never been identified.

Context

Why it lands on Will Rogers

Rogers is one of the safest-looking places in American English to park an orphan aphorism. He wrote in short, plain, self-contained sentences; he published so much — over 3,600 newspaper columns in sixteen years, by the museum’s count — that almost any homespun line feels like it could be in there somewhere; and he died in 1935, long enough ago that nobody expects to be handed a page number.

The tell here is that the sentence has no fixed form. It travels as “don’t let yesterday use up too much of today” and as “don’t let yesterday take up too much of today,” both filed under Rogers on the same quote sites. Genuine quotations tend to stabilise around the text that was actually printed. Wording that keeps sliding is usually wording that was never printed anywhere in particular.

A real quote has a page it came from. This one has two spellings, two famous names, and no page.

What “not in Rogers” actually means here

The Will Rogers Memorial Museums have put his syndicated journalism online as free PDFs: Weekly Articles in six volumes covering 1922 to 1935, and a complete four-volume set of the Daily Telegrams running from 1926 to his final column, datelined 15 August 1935 and printed 16 August 1935. Together that is roughly 1.4 million words — effectively the whole of the writing that made him a household name.

Searching that text for the phrase, and for its component fragments, returns nothing. This is a strong negative but not a total one: Rogers also published six books and a run of magazine pieces, which are not in those volumes, and he spoke constantly on stage and radio without transcripts. So the honest verdict is that the line is absent from his published columns and undocumented everywhere else — not that its non-existence has been proved.

The John Wooden trail is worth following and stops just as quickly. Wooden was famous for exactly this kind of compressed maxim, and the line is presented as his on sites made with his family’s cooperation — but none of them names a book, a talk or a year, which is what would be needed to call him the author rather than a very effective repeater.

Explore

Filed under

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

Time Change Hope

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.

Wikiquote: Will Rogers (Misattributed)en.wikiquote.org

The anchor finding: Wikiquote lists this line in the Misattributed section of its Will Rogers page, with no citation.
Will Rogers Memorial Museum: Will’s Quoteswillrogers.com

The museum’s curated quotations page. It does not include this line, and warns that some quotes attributed to Rogers are falsely credited.
Will Rogers Memorial Museum: Will’s Writingswillrogers.com

Free PDF editions of the complete Weekly Articles (1922–1935) and Daily Telegrams (1926–1935) — the corpus we searched, with no match.
The unsourced Rogers attribution on Goodreadsgoodreads.com

Shows the popular credit to Will Rogers with no source; Goodreads notes its quotes are community-added and unverified.
The same line as a John Wooden maximthewoodeneffect.com

Produced by SUCCESS magazine in cooperation with the John R. Wooden family; lists the “take up” wording as Wooden’s, also without a source.
Wooden’s Wisdom, Issue 56woodenswisdom.com

A leadership newsletter treating the line as a foundational Wooden maxim and quoting his explanation of the idea.

Wrongly credited

About Will Rogers

Will Rogers

1879–1935 · American humorist, newspaper columnist & film star

Will Rogers was born a citizen of the Cherokee Nation near Oologah, Indian Territory, and rose from trick roping to the Ziegfeld Follies, to Hollywood, and to a syndicated newspaper column that ran from 1922 until his death in an Alaska plane crash on 15 August 1935. His weekly articles and daily telegrams made him one of the most widely read commentators in America. That plainspoken, wry, endlessly quotable voice is precisely why unsourced aphorisms keep landing under his name — and why the museum that keeps his papers has to warn readers that some of them are false.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

No documented source

No primary source located. Listed among Will Rogers’s misattributed sayings in “Will Rogers,” Wikiquote, Misattributed section, accessed 17 August 2026. Not present in Will Rogers, Weekly Articles, 6 vols. (1922–1935), or Daily Telegrams, 4 vols. (1926–1935), Will Rogers Memorial Museums online editions (Claremore, OK, 2008–2011).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Don't let yesterday use up too much of today’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/dont-let-yesterday-use-up-too-much-of-today/

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