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Who really said it

Every Ambitious Would-Be Empire Clarions It Abroad That She Is Conquering the World to Bring It Peace

Not Henry David Thoreau — Taylor Caldwell wrote it in a 1968 novel Taylor Caldwell 1900–1985 · British-born American novelist
Disputed In copyright

The passage appears in Taylor Caldwell’s 1968 novel Testimony of Two Men, where a character recalls the anti-imperialist politician George S. Boutwell saying it. Quote Investigator, whose earliest located citation this is, states that the words about empire were not written by Thoreau, has found no substantive support for the Boutwell ascription, and suggests Caldwell should be credited.

Last verified 2 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Every Ambitious Would-Be Empire Clarions It Abroad That She Is Conquering the World to Bring It Peace” Not Henry David Thoreau. Written by Taylor Caldwell in her 1968 novel "Testimony of Two Men" (p. 452), where a character attributes the words to the politician George S. Boutwell. · Verbatim: “Every ambitious would-be empire clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie, and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it!”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Henry David Thoreau. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Taylor Caldwell; first published by Doubleday & Company (1968)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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

In context

Evoking the world of Taylor Caldwell — British-born American novelist of popular historical fiction. Theme: "Every Ambitious Would-Be Empire Clarions It Abroad That She Is Conquering the World to Bring It Peace". 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 "Every Ambitious Would-Be Empire Clarions It Abroad That She Is Conquering the World to Bring It Peace". 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
Testimony of Two Men
Author
Taylor Caldwell (Janet Miriam Caldwell), 1900–1985
Published
1968, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York — quote page 452
Form
Spoken by a character, who attributes it to George S. Boutwell

Every ambitious would-be empire clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie, and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it! Taylor Caldwell, Testimony of Two Men, 1968, page 452

The wording that circulates online is usually shortened — most often dropping ‘security and’ and cutting off before ‘That is a lie’. In the novel the sentence is dialogue: a character quoting, from memory and with an explicit hedge (‘if I am repeating him correctly’), a politician who died in 1905.

Quote Investigator — the Caldwell, Boutwell and Thoreau tangle

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator’s earliest located instance is Taylor Caldwell’s Testimony of Two Men (1968), quote page 452, verified with scans. The words are dialogue, not narration the 1968 citation ↗.
  • The same speech in the novel embeds a second quotation, this one attributed to Thoreau — and that is where the Thoreau association comes from. Caldwell’s character renders it ‘If I knew a man was approaching my house to do me good, I would flee for my life’ the passage in full ↗.
  • That embedded line is genuinely Thoreau, but paraphrased. Walden reads ‘If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life’ — confirmed in the full text Walden at Project Gutenberg ↗. The empire sentence is not in Walden.
  • The attribution to Thoreau was in public circulation by 2003, when the El Paso Times published a letter to the editor quoting the empire passage as his the 2003 letter ↗.
In copyright

In copyright. Testimony of Two Men was first published in 1968, well after the 1930 cut-off for the United States public domain, so the passage belongs to Caldwell’s estate and her publisher. Quote it as short comment or criticism with attribution rather than reproducing it at length. Note also that crediting it to Thoreau does not make it free to use — the words are still Caldwell’s. 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

Three names, one novelist

This passage has been credited to three different people, and the reason is visible in the novel itself: Caldwell wrote a character quoting a politician, and embedded a real Thoreau paraphrase in the same speech.

Did not write it refuted

Quote Investigator states directly that ‘the words about empire were not written by Henry David Thoreau’. The passage is absent from Walden search the full text ↗, and Caldwell’s 1968 novel remains the earliest known appearance.

A second, genuine Thoreau quote in the same speech why the names swapped

Caldwell’s character quotes Thoreau’s ‘doing me good’ line immediately before the empire sentence. Two quotations, one paragraph — and the attribution slid from the first onto the second the passage ↗.

No supporting text found unsupported

The novel’s character credits Boutwell, but Quote Investigator has found no substantive evidence he said or wrote it, and notes Caldwell demonstrably paraphrased the Thoreau line in the same breath — so she may well have paraphrased Boutwell too QI’s reasoning ↗.

The author QI suggests crediting genuine

It is her sentence, on her page, in her novel. Everything downstream is a quotation of Caldwell the conclusion ↗.

Written by Taylor Caldwell in Testimony of Two Men (1968, p. 452) and spoken by a fictional character — not by Thoreau, and with no evidence for Boutwell the evidence ↗.

Context

Why it travels

The sentence is built to be quoted: a general law about empires, a flat verdict (‘That is a lie’), and a closing turn about each generation falling for it again. It reads like something written in 1849 by a man in a cabin, which is exactly why Thoreau’s name fits it so comfortably.

It was in fact written in 1968, at the height of American argument over Vietnam, by a popular novelist putting words into the mouth of a nineteenth-century anti-imperialist. The anachronism is the point of the effect — and the reason the quotation lost its author.

That is a lie, and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it!

Read the full story

Caldwell’s character introduces the speech with an explicit hedge — ‘if I am repeating him correctly’ — which is a novelist signalling that this is a recollection, not a transcript. Quote Investigator picks up on exactly that: because the Thoreau line in the same passage is demonstrably altered, an electronic search for a matching Boutwell original may be futile even if one exists.

The lesson is a general one for quotation hunting. A line spoken by a fictional character, attributed inside the fiction to a real person, is one of the most reliable ways for a sentence to escape its author — the quotation marks travel, the novel does not.

Explore

Filed under

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

Power Truth Freedom

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.

Every Ambitious Would-Be Empire Clarions It Abroadquoteinvestigator.com

The investigation that traces the passage to Caldwell’s 1968 novel and rules out both Thoreau and Boutwell.
Taylor Caldwellen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the novelist who actually wrote the sentence.
George S. Boutwellen.wikipedia.org

The anti-imperialist politician Caldwell’s character credits — for which no supporting text has been found.
Walden (full text)gutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg’s Walden, where the genuine ‘doing me good’ sentence appears and the empire passage does not.
Henry David Thoreau on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced Thoreau quotations, including the genuine Walden line this passage is often confused with.
Anti-Imperialist Leagueen.wikipedia.org

The organisation Boutwell led, and the political context the novel is drawing on.

The author

About Taylor Caldwell

Taylor Caldwell

1900–1985 · British-born American novelist of popular historical fiction

Taylor Caldwell — born Janet Miriam Caldwell — produced bestsellers across four decades, several of them sprawling historical novels with strong political convictions running through them. Testimony of Two Men (1968) was popular enough to be adapted as a television miniseries in the 1970s, which is a large part of why a line of her dialogue escaped the book and went looking for a more famous author.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Caldwell, Taylor. Testimony of Two Men. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1968, p. 452. Citation and page located per Quote Investigator (verified with scans).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Every Ambitious Would-Be Empire Clarions It Abroad That She Is Conquering the World to Bring It Peace’?” Last verified 2 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/every-ambitious-would-be-empire-clarions-it-abroad-that-she/

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