Who really said it

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe

Q: Did Abraham Lincoln say "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe"?

No. According to Quote Investigator, there is no substantive evidence Abraham Lincoln (who died in 1865) ever said this. The line began as an anonymous lumberjack's saying — the earliest version, from a 1944 Oklahoma newspaper, is credited to "the lumberjack" and speaks of five minutes and three minutes, not six hours and four. The Lincoln label doesn't appear until a 1960 magazine advertisement.

Not Abraham Lincoln — a 20th-century lumberjack saying Anonymous woodsmen & loggers (a folk aphorism) Earliest recorded 1944 · pinned to Lincoln only from 1960

Disputed Rights unconfirmed

According to Quote Investigator ↗, there is no substantive evidence Abraham Lincoln (who died in 1865) ever said this. The line began as an anonymous lumberjack’s saying — the earliest version, from a 1944 Oklahoma newspaper, is credited to “the lumberjack” and speaks of five minutes and three minutes, not six hours and four. The Lincoln label doesn’t appear until a 1960 magazine advertisement.

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

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe” Misattributed to Abraham Lincoln. No evidence he said it; it began as an anonymous lumberjack saying first recorded in 1944 and was pinned to Lincoln only from 1960. —Quotle.info

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

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We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

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Provenance

Where this line actually comes from

Status: Misattributed to Abraham Lincoln
Earliest record: Sooner State Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 2 Dec 1944
Original wording: A lumberjack cutting a tree in five minutes would spend three sharpening his axe
First tied to Lincoln: A May 1960 advertisement in Roads and Streets magazine

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

The popular “six hours … first four” wording is a late, inflated form. The earliest documented versions speak of minutes — a woodsman cutting a tree in five minutes who spends three sharpening his axe — and name no famous author at all.

Quote Investigator: the full chronology

How we verified this

Quote Investigator ↗ traces the earliest version to the Sooner State Press (Norman, Oklahoma) of 2 December 1944, where a minister credits it to “the lumberjack” — five minutes to cut a tree, three spent sharpening the axe.
The first time the saying is attached to Lincoln, per QI ↗, is a May 1960 advertisement — 95 years after Lincoln’s death — and even then it reads “five minutes … first three,” not the modern hours version.
QI’s verdict is blunt: “there is no substantive evidence that Abraham Lincoln … made a remark of this type,” and he “should not be ascribed any version of this saying.”
The fabrication is durable enough that in 2016 76ers GM Sam Hinkie quoted it as Lincoln ↗ in his resignation letter — and was promptly fact-checked.

The exact popular wording is an anonymous 20th-century folk aphorism with no identifiable author, edition, or fixed source text — so no copyright status can be responsibly asserted. It is not a Lincoln text, and the “six hours … four” phrasing cannot be tied to any single dated publication.

Fact-check

A folk saying dressed up as presidential wisdom

This is a textbook feel-good misattribution: an anonymous trade proverb about preparation, retro-fitted onto Abraham Lincoln decades after his death to borrow his authority.

Abraham Lincoln Misattributed

Lincoln died in 1865. Quote Investigator ↗ finds no substantive evidence he ever said anything of the kind, and the earliest Lincoln ascription is a 1960 advertisement — nearly a century later.

Anonymous lumberjacks Paraphrase

The oldest documented forms (from 1944 onward) use minutes and name an unnamed woodsman; the familiar “six hours … first four sharpening the axe” is a later, inflated rewrite, per QI ↗.

The kernel of wisdom is real and old — but it belongs to anonymous woodsmen, not to Lincoln, and the exact modern wording is a 20th-century paraphrase (Quote Investigator ↗).

Context

Why it sticks to Lincoln

Lincoln spent part of his youth splitting rails, and the “Rail-Splitter” image makes an axe metaphor feel authentically his — which is exactly why the saying migrated onto him. An appeal to “Lincoln said” carries far more rhetorical weight than “a logger once said,” so the attribution spread through quote sites, business books, and productivity blogs until it looked settled.

Borrowed wisdom from an unnamed logger — not the 16th President.

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Filed under

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

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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: sharpening the axequoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative investigation: 1944 lumberjack origin, 1960 first Lincoln ascription, and the verdict that Lincoln said no version.

Philadelphia Magazine fact-checkphillymag.com

Documents a high-profile modern use of the fake Lincoln quote and confirms the misattribution.

Wikiquote: Abraham Lincolnen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s Lincoln page and its misattributed section for cross-checking spurious lines.

Goodreads (misattributed listing)goodreads.com

An example of how the quote proliferates online under Lincoln’s name, unsourced.

Popularly credited to

About the man it’s pinned on

Abraham Lincoln

1809–1865 · 16th President of the United States

Abraham Lincoln led the United States through the Civil War and is one of history’s most quoted figures — which makes him a magnet for feel-good lines he never spoke. His documented eloquence lives in the Gettysburg Address, his debates, and his letters; a productivity proverb about sharpening axes is not among them.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented source

Garson O’Toole (Quote Investigator), “To Cut Down a Tree in Five Minutes Spend Three Minutes Sharpening Your Axe,” March 29, 2014. Earliest documented version: Sooner State Press (Norman, OK), December 2, 1944.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/give-me-six-hours-to-chop-down-a-tree-and-i-will-spend-the