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Who really said it

Famous for being famous

Not Andy Warhol — critics said it about him Charles Godfrey Leland 1824–1903 · American humorist & folklorist
Disputed Free to reuse

Warhol did not coin this — it was a phrase other people used to describe him. Quote Investigator’s chronology ↗ finds “famous for being famous” already in print in its modern sense in 1896, in Charles Godfrey Leland’s Legends of Florence, Second Series — before Warhol was born — and again in Hans Otto Storm’s novel Count Ten in 1940. Daniel J. Boorstin popularised the idea in 1962 with different words. The earliest Warhol link QI documents is a January 1974 Guardian review that applies the phrase to him.

Last verified 24 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Famous for being famous” not Andy Warhol. The phrase appears in Charles Godfrey Leland's Legends of Florence, Second Series (1896), p. 229, and in Hans Otto Storm's Count Ten (1940); Daniel J. Boorstin popularized the idea in The Image (1962) as "known for his well-knownness." Critics applied it to Warhol — The Guardian, 31 January 1974. Via Quotle.info

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Provenance

The earliest documented use

Work
Legends of Florence, Collected from the People and Re-told by Charles Godfrey Leland (Hans Breitmann), Second Series
Chapter
“La Via del Gomitolo del Oro, and How it got its Name”
Published
1896 — Macmillan & Co., New York; David Nutt, London
Page
229

To which the observant Flaxius appends: “There are in the world, of women not a few, and many men, I ween, well thereunto, whose whole life and highest aim is really not to win gold for real pleasure, or even for avarice or aught solid, but merely to live in its glitter and sheen — to frôler and froisser, rumple and rustle drap d’or and damask drapery, jingle jewels, in a kind of fade ostentation, as doth a professional beauty or an actress famous for being famous, nothing more, and being diamonded or demi-monded for famousness…” Abridged

Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of the 1896 David Nutt (London) printing at page 229; Quote Investigator verified the same passage at page 229 of the Macmillan (New York) printing. Flaxius is the commenting figure Leland uses to close his Florentine legends.

Read Legends of Florence, Second Series (1896) at the Internet Archive

How the phrase travelled

  • 1896 — Charles Godfrey Leland uses it of “an actress famous for being famous, nothing more” on page 229 of Legends of Florence, Second Series (full text at the Internet Archive ↗).
  • 1962 — Daniel J. Boorstin gives the idea its enduring form in The Image: “The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness” (transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗).
  • 31 January 1974 — The Guardian’s John Coleman, reviewing Stephen Koch’s Stargazer, writes of Warhol: “Famous for being famous, he is pure image” — the earliest Warhol connection QI documents ↗.
  • Today — the line circulates under Warhol’s name, though it appears nowhere among his sourced quotations on Wikiquote ↗.
Public domain

The excerpt above is from Leland’s Legends of Florence, Second Series, first published in 1896 — comfortably before 1931, so it is in the public domain in the United States and free to quote. Later formulations of the same idea are not: Boorstin’s The Image (1962) and the 1974 Guardian review remain in copyright to their authors and publishers, so only short quotation of those is appropriate.

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

Who gets the credit, and why

Three names attach themselves to these four words. Only one of them is documented as having put the phrase into print first, and it is not the famous one.

Andy Warhol Said about him, not by him

Quote Investigator ↗ states plainly that the saying is linked to Warhol because it was often applied to him, and cites The Guardian of 31 January 1974 — John Coleman reviewing Stephen Koch’s Stargazer — writing of Warhol: “Famous for being famous, he is pure image.” Wikiquote’s page of his sourced quotations ↗ does not contain the phrase at all.

Daniel J. Boorstin Popularized it — in other words

Boorstin’s The Image (1962) is where the modern concept took hold, but his actual wording ↗ was “The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness,” alongside “notorious for their notoriety” and “well known for its well-knownness.” QI credits him with popularising the notion, not with the four-word phrase.

Malcolm Muggeridge Often called the first — he wasn't

Wikipedia ↗ says Muggeridge “may have been the first to use the actual phrase,” in the 1967 introduction to Muggeridge Through The Microphone: “Today one is famous for being famous.” But QI’s chronology ↗ documents the phrase in print in 1896 and again in 1940.

Quote Investigator’s conclusion ↗: Charles Godfrey Leland employed the phrase “famous for being famous” with the modern sense in 1896; Hans Otto Storm used it again in 1940; and Daniel J. Boorstin popularised the notion in 1962 with The Image. Warhol’s name arrived last, attached by other people’s pens.

Context

Why it stuck to Warhol

Warhol was not the author of the phrase; he was its best illustration. By the mid-1970s critics reached for “famous for being famous” whenever they needed to explain an artist whose principal medium seemed to be his own visibility. The line and the man fused, and a description hardened into a quotation.

There is a second layer to the irony. Even Warhol’s genuinely signature line about fame — the fifteen-minutes prophecy that Wikiquote traces to a 1968 Stockholm exhibition catalogue — is contested ↗, with curator Pontus Hultén, photographer Nat Finkelstein and painter Larry Rivers all named as possible sources. Warhol is, in the most literal sense, quoted for being quoted.

“Famous for being famous, he is pure image.” — The Guardian on Warhol, 31 January 1974

More stops on the phrase’s route

Quote Investigator records the actress Raquel Welch using the line about herself in The Los Angeles Times in 1966: “I am famous for being famous.”

In July 1967 an Indianapolis columnist applied it to Jayne Mansfield and Zsa Zsa Gabor; in 1970 LIFE applied it to Oscar Wilde; and in April 1974 the newsman David Brinkley turned it on his own trade in The Washington Post: “Mainly, he is famous for being famous.”

By 2004 it had been absorbed into the reference shelf ↗: The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms gives it an entry, glossed as “having no recognizable reason for your fame other than high media exposure.”

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Famous for Being Famousquoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative chronology: Leland 1896, Storm 1940, Boorstin 1962, McLuhan 1962, Welch 1966, the 1974 Guardian line about Warhol, and QI's conclusion.
Legends of Florence, Second Series (1896)archive.org

Full scan and searchable text of Leland's 1896 collection; the phrase is on page 229, in the chapter on the Via del Gomitolo del Oro.
Famous for being famousen.wikipedia.org

Encyclopedia entry tracing the concept to Boorstin's The Image (1962) and noting Malcolm Muggeridge's 1967 use of the phrase itself.
Andy Warhol — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's collection of Warhol's documented quotes, decade by decade. The phrase 'famous for being famous' does not appear anywhere on it.
The Image, by Daniel J. Boorstinarchive.org

Borrowable scan of Boorstin's book (1992 Vintage printing) — the source of 'a person who is known for his well-knownness.'
Warhol Probably Never Said His Celebrated Fame Linesmithsonianmag.com

On the contested authorship of Warhol's other fame quotation, the fifteen-minutes line, and the claims made for Pontus Hultén, Nat Finkelstein and Larry Rivers.

Earliest documented use

The man who wrote it first

Charles Godfrey Leland

1824–1903 · American humorist & folklorist

Charles Godfrey Leland was an American humorist and folklorist, best known in his own lifetime as the author of the comic Hans Breitmann’s Ballads (1871). He spent his later years in Europe collecting folk tales, publishing Legends of Florence, Collected from the People in 1896 and the witchcraft text Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. The four words that would later define modern celebrity appear almost in passing in his 1896 Florentine collection — a stray jab at “an actress famous for being famous, nothing more.”

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented use

Charles Godfrey Leland, “La Via del Gomitolo del Oro, and How it got its Name,” in Legends of Florence, Collected from the People and Re-told by Charles Godfrey Leland (Hans Breitmann), Second Series (London: David Nutt, 1896), 229. Earliest documented use of the phrase in its modern sense per Quote Investigator, which verified the same passage at page 229 of the Macmillan (New York) printing.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Famous for being famous’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/famous-for-being-famous/

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