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Who really said it

Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be

Not Abraham Lincoln — no evidence he said it Abraham Lincoln 1809–1865 · 16th U.S. president
Disputed Free to reuse

There is no substantive evidence that Lincoln ever said or wrote this. The earliest documented appearance is a column by Dr. Frank Crane on 1 January 1914 — roughly fifty years after Lincoln’s death — which credited “Lincoln’s saying” but gave no source, and Crane himself printed at least three different wordings over the years. It spread through Orison Swett Marden, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), and Disney’s Pollyanna (1960).

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed — copy with the correction

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be” Misattributed to Abraham Lincoln — no evidence he said it. Earliest documented use: Frank Crane's newspaper column, 1 January 1914.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Abraham Lincoln. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

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

In context

Evoking the world of Abraham Lincoln — 16th U.S. president. Theme: "Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be". 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 "Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be". 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 paper trail

Popularly credited to
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
Earliest documented use
Dr. Frank Crane, syndicated column, 1 January 1914
Popularized by
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936); Disney’s Pollyanna (1960)
Status
No evidence in Lincoln’s writings or speeches

Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be. The wording that stuck

Frank Crane’s 1914 wording. He later reworked it — “most people in this world are about as happy as they have made up their minds to be” (1916) and “a man is usually about as happy as he has made up his mind to be” (1920) — a fluidity that argues against a fixed Lincoln original.

Quote Investigator: full investigation

How we traced it

  • Quote Investigator traced the earliest instance to a New Year’s Resolutions column by Dr. Frank Crane on 1 January 1914, which referred to “Lincoln’s saying that folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
  • Crane printed at least three different phrasings between 1914 and 1920, and never cited where in Lincoln he found it — a hallmark of an attribution invented rather than documented, per Quote Investigator.
  • The saying reached a mass audience through Dale Carnegie’s 1936 bestseller and Disney’s 1960 film Pollyanna, both of which credited it to Lincoln, cementing a misattribution with no primary basis (Quote Investigator).
Public domain

The earliest documented wording appears in Frank Crane’s newspaper column of 1 January 1914 — well before the 1931 U.S. public-domain cutoff — and short aphorisms are not themselves copyrightable, so the text carries no active rights claim. It is not a work of Abraham Lincoln.

Fact-check

Who really said it

This is a textbook twentieth-century misattribution: a cheerful, self-help-friendly line pinned on Lincoln decades after his death, with no trace in anything he actually wrote or spoke.

Not Abraham Lincoln no evidence

No instance of this saying appears in Lincoln’s documented speeches, letters, or the Collected Works. Quote Investigator concludes there is “no substantive evidence” he used the expression.

Dr. Frank Crane, 1914 first in print

Columnist Frank Crane put the line in print on 1 January 1914, attributing it to Lincoln but supplying no source — and he rephrased it repeatedly in later years, which is inconsistent with quoting a fixed original (Quote Investigator).

Dale Carnegie & Disney’s Pollyanna spread it

Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) and the 1960 Disney film Pollyanna both credited Lincoln, carrying the misattribution to millions (Quote Investigator).

Best evidence: a modern maxim mis-credited to Lincoln, first documented in a 1914 Frank Crane column and popularized by Carnegie and Disney — not the words of Abraham Lincoln (Quote Investigator).

Context

Why it stuck to Lincoln

Lincoln’s stature makes his name a magnet for uplifting sayings, and this one had powerful twentieth-century amplifiers. Once Frank Crane credited “Lincoln’s saying” in 1914, the attribution was picked up by motivational writers, then hard-wired into popular culture by Dale Carnegie’s runaway 1936 bestseller and Disney’s beloved 1960 film Pollyanna.

The result is a line that sounds like folk-wisdom Lincoln, but is really an early self-help aphorism searching for a distinguished author.

First documented in 1914 — roughly fifty years after Lincoln died.

Explore

Filed under

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

Happiness Purpose

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.

Quote Investigator: Happy as they make up their mindsquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: earliest 1914 Crane citation, the three phrasings, and the Carnegie/Pollyanna spread.
Abraham Lincoln (Wikiquote)en.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s Lincoln page, with its sourced and misattributed sections for cross-checking Lincoln quotations.
Lincoln Said What? Bogus Quotations Take On New Lifenpr.org

NPR feature on the epidemic of fake Lincoln quotes and how they circulate online.
How to Win Friends and Influence People (Internet Archive)archive.org

Dale Carnegie’s bestseller — first published 1936 — was a key vector that spread the Lincoln attribution; this Internet Archive scan is a later revised edition.

Popularly credited to

Why it lands on Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

1809–1865 · 16th U.S. president

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) led the United States through the Civil War and is among the most quoted figures in American history. That fame makes him one of the internet’s biggest magnets for feel-good sayings he never spoke — his documented words survive in speeches, letters, and the Collected Works, and this cheerful aphorism appears in none of them. The line was attached to his name only in the twentieth century, long after his death.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Quote Investigator

Earliest documented in Frank Crane, syndicated newspaper column (Syracuse Herald), 1 January 1914; investigated in “Quote Origin: Folks Are Usually About as Happy as They Make Up Their Minds To Be,” Quote Investigator, 20 October 2012.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/folks-are-usually-about-as-happy-as-they-make-up-their

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