Not original to Paulo Coelho — an old English proverbJoseph Addison1672–1719 · English essayist, poet & co-founder of The Spectator (earliest documented user)
Coelho really does use this line in his 1990 novel “Brida” — but it is a centuries-old English proverb, not his own coinage. Quote Investigator traces the earliest documented instance to Joseph Addison’s essay in “The Spectator” (1711) and finds that Ebner-Eschenbach, Lewis Carroll, Washington Irving and Coelho all used the saying without originating it.
“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day” Traditional English proverb (not original to Paulo Coelho); earliest documented in Joseph Addison's The Spectator, 1711.
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Provenance
The proverb and its documented trail
Type
Traditional English proverb (not original to Coelho)
Earliest documented
Joseph Addison, The Spectator, no. 129 (1711)
Quoted by Coelho in
Brida
Translation
English by Margaret Jull Costa (HarperCollins, 2008; orig. Portuguese 1990)
“Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong,” said her father, looking at the clock. “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”
The line as it appears in Coelho’s “Brida” (English translation, 2008) — a quotation of an existing proverb, not an original creation. Addison’s 1711 phrasing was different: “a clock that stands still is sure to point right once in twelve hours.”
Quote Investigator locates the earliest instance in Joseph Addison’s “The Spectator” (1711) and lists later users — Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Lewis Carroll, Washington Irving and Paulo Coelho — concluding none of them coined it.
The word-history study at WordHistories.net independently dates the earliest occurrence to Addison’s Spectator essay of 28 July 1711.
The exact modern wording is genuinely in Coelho’s book: Goodreads records it from “Brida” — but as a line spoken by a character, quoting the proverb.
✓Public domain
The saying is a traditional English proverb documented since the early 18th century — Joseph Addison’s “The Spectator” (1711), and again in 19th-century sources — so the proverb itself is firmly in the public domain and long predates Coelho. Only the surrounding text of Coelho’s novel “Brida” (Portuguese 1990; English translation 2008) is under copyright; the one-line proverb he quotes is not his to own.
Fact-check
Who it’s wrongly credited to
Feel-good social posts routinely stamp this proverb with Paulo Coelho’s name because he quotes it in “Brida.” He is far from the only famous name attached to it, and none of them originated the saying.
✕
Most common onlinePaulo Coelho quoted it, didn’t coin it
Coelho really does write “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day” in “Brida” (1990), which is why quote sites tag it to him — but Quote Investigator shows the proverb predates him by nearly three centuries.
✕
Older attributionsMarie von Ebner-Eschenbach & Lewis Carroll also just users
The Austrian writer Ebner-Eschenbach was credited in mid-20th-century sources, and Lewis Carroll made a stopped-vs-slow-clock comparison in a teenage manuscript — but QI finds neither originated it.
Paulo Coelho is one of the internet’s biggest magnets for recycled wisdom: his novels are studded with aphorisms and old sayings that quote-sites then re-caption as his own inventions. “Brida” puts this proverb in the mouth of Brida’s father, and from there it migrated onto quote cards under Coelho’s name alone.
The saying itself is far older and essentially anonymous. It expresses a small logical paradox — a clock that has stopped still displays the correct time for two instants each day — and has been used since the 1700s to argue that even something broken, or someone usually wrong, is occasionally right by accident.
He quoted the proverb; he didn’t coin it.
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More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1672–1719 · English essayist & co-founder of The Spectator
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet and politician who, with Richard Steele, founded The Spectator in 1711 — one of the most influential periodicals in English literary history. The earliest documented version of this saying appears in his 1711 essay, though he phrased it as “a clock that stands still is sure to point right once in twelve hours.” The line functions as an anonymous English proverb: many later writers — including Paulo Coelho — quoted it, but none, Addison included, can be shown to have invented the exact modern wording.
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Cite this
Earliest documented source
Earliest documented in Joseph Addison, The Spectator, no. 129 (1711); later quoted by Paulo Coelho, Brida, trans. Margaret Jull Costa (London: HarperCollins, 2008; orig. Portuguese, 1990).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Even a stopped clock is right twice a day’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/even-a-stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day