Everything is OK in the end. If it's not OK, it's not the end
Not John Lennon — a Brazilian saying, first recorded by Fernando SabinoFernando Sabino1923–2004 · Brazilian writer and journalist
?Attribution status: Disputed — Quote Investigator finds every attribution to Lennon is posthumous, and calls those linkages probably spurious.?Reuse status: Rights unconfirmed
The oldest known appearance of this saying is not in English and not by Lennon: Quote Investigator ↗ traces it to the 1988 Brazilian Portuguese book O tabuleiro de damas, where Fernando Sabino credits the line to his father, Domingos Sabino. The exact English wording on this page has no known author at all — Wikiquote ↗ files it under Lennon’s Disputed section and records it circulating anonymously on Usenet in 2000, with the first known credit to Lennon appearing only in 2011.
“Everything is OK in the end. If it's not OK, it's not the end” not John Lennon. The earliest known version of this saying appears in Fernando Sabino's Brazilian Portuguese book "O tabuleiro de damas" (1988), where Sabino credits it to his father, Domingos Sabino. The exact English wording is documented anonymously on Usenet in 2000; every attribution to Lennon is posthumous. Source: Quote Investigator, quoteinvestigator.com/2023/01/01/everything-ok/ — via Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to John Lennon. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
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In context
Evoking the world of Fernando Sabino — Brazilian writer and journalist. Theme: "Everything is OK in the end. If it's not OK, it's not the end". 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 "Everything is OK in the end. If it's not OK, it's not the end". 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 oldest known version isn't in English
Earliest known citation
O tabuleiro de damas (The Checkerboard), 1988
Recorded by
Fernando Sabino, crediting his father, Domingos Sabino
Translation
From Brazilian Portuguese; English rendering by Quote Investigator (2023)
Exact English wording
Anonymous — documented on Usenet, 2000
“tudo no fim dá certo. Se não deu, é porque ainda não chegou ao fim.”
Rendered in English by Quote Investigator as: “everything works out in the end. If it didn’t, it’s because it hasn’t come to an end yet.”
Translated from Portuguese
The English here is Quote Investigator’s rendering of Sabino’s Portuguese, not a published literary translation — and it is not the wording that circulates under Lennon’s name. The familiar English sentence has no identified author.
1988 — the earliest citation.Quote Investigator’s earliest match ↗ is Fernando Sabino’s Brazilian Portuguese book O tabuleiro de damas, in which he attributes the saying to his father, Domingos Sabino. The Portuguese wording also appears under Sabino’s name on Portuguese Wikiquote ↗.
2000 — the English sentence, unsigned.Wikiquote ↗ records this exact wording appearing anonymously on the Usenet group alt.support.divorce in 2000, with no author attached. Quote Investigator lists the same 2000 Usenet appearance in its citation timeline.
The verdict. Quote Investigator concludes that Domingos Sabino is the leading candidate for creator of the saying on the strength of his son’s 1988 testimony, while allowing that he may have been transmitting an existing adage — and states it has found no citations before 1988 ↗.
No rights status can honestly be asserted for the familiar English sentence, because it has no identified author or first publication — it is documented circulating anonymously on Usenet in 2000. Separately, the earliest known citation, Fernando Sabino’s O tabuleiro de damas (1988), is a modern work and would be under copyright; the short Portuguese phrase is reproduced here as a brief quotation for attribution research.
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
Four famous names, no evidence
This saying has been pinned on a rotating cast of the beloved and the dead. Quote Investigator ↗ examined each and found the same pattern: the attribution always arrives long after the saying is already in circulation.
Named alongside Lennon in Quote Investigator’s ↗ list of attributions that first appear after the attributed speaker’s death, and judged probably spurious on the same grounds.
✕
The bestselling BrazilianPaulo Coelho too late
Quote Investigator notes that attributions to Coelho appear many years after the 1988 citation ↗, which rules him out chronologically as the originator.
~
The line people actually rememberSonny in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) amplifier, not origin
✓The honest answer: nobody can show John Lennon ever said this. The oldest documented version of the thought is Portuguese, written down by Fernando Sabino in 1988 and credited to his father — and even Quote Investigator ↗ allows that Domingos Sabino may simply have been passing along an adage he had heard elsewhere.
Context
Why this one stuck to Lennon
It is a perfect Lennon-shaped sentence — short, warm, faintly stoned, the sort of thing you can imagine him saying between takes. That is precisely the problem. Feel-good aphorisms drift toward whichever famous name makes them sound wisest, and Lennon, who died in 1980 and can no longer object, is one of the internet’s most reliable magnets.
The saying got its real engine in 2011, when The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel put a version of it in Dev Patel’s mouth as the hotel’s cheerfully doomed manager. But Quote Investigator ↗ notes the phrase was already circulating before the film’s release — the movie amplified it, it did not invent it.
The oldest known version is in Portuguese, and the man who wrote it down said he got it from his dad.
Read the full story
Quote Investigator’s timeline for this saying runs from a 1920 Buffalo Enquirer item it labels only a thematic match — “There is a happy ending to every story if we only look deep enough for it” — through a dense cluster of 2000s appearances, before the famous-name attributions arrive.
The names that get attached are worth noticing as a set: John Lennon, Oscar Wilde, Paulo Coelho, Fernando Sabino. Three of the four are simply the kind of person the saying sounds like. Only Sabino has a document behind him, and even his document points somewhere else — to his father.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Fernando Sabino was a Brazilian writer and journalist who published his first book in 1941 and went on to author roughly fifty across his career, winning national and international recognition with O encontro marcado (A Time to Meet, 1956). His claim on this quote is not that he coined it — in the 1988 book O tabuleiro de damas he presents it as something his father, Domingos Sabino, used to say. That secondhand credit is, so far, the oldest documented trace anyone has found of the saying in any language.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this page
Earliest documented in Fernando Sabino, O tabuleiro de damas (1988), where Sabino credits the saying to his father, Domingos Sabino; per Quote Investigator, "Quote Origin: Everything Will Be OK in the End. If It's Not OK It's Not the End," quoteinvestigator.com, January 1, 2023. The exact English wording is documented anonymously on Usenet in 2000; no source connects it to John Lennon during his lifetime.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Everything is OK in the end. If it's not OK, it's not the end’?” Last verified 6 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/everything-is-ok-in-the-end-if-its-not-ok-its-not-the-end/