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Who really said it

He Is a Self-Made Man.” “Yes, And He Worships His Creator

Not Disraeli — the jibe is Henry Clapp’s, aimed at Horace Greeley Henry Clapp American editor and wit · died 1875 · editor of the New York Saturday Press
Disputed Free to reuse

Disraeli is on the wrong side of this one. Quote Investigator credits the core of the joke to William Allen Butler’s 1858 poem Two Millions, and the modern wording to Henry Clapp, whose line about Horace Greeley — ‘a self made man, and worships his creator’ — ran in newspapers in March 1868. By June 1870 an English version had John Bright saying of Disraeli that ‘he adores his maker’. Disraeli was the target. He becomes the speaker only in 1964, when a book on political wit reversed the two men.

Last verified 5 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“He Is a Self-Made Man.” “Yes, And He Worships His Creator” Not said by Disraeli — said about him. The jibe is Henry Clapp’s, aimed at Horace Greeley in March 1868; the core idea is William Allen Butler’s poem "Two Millions" (1858). · Verbatim: “Henry Clapp says that Horace Greeley is a self made man, and worships his creator.”

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

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Core of the joke
Two Millions by William Allen Butler, 1858
Modern wording
Henry Clapp, on Horace Greeley, March 1868
Disraeli version
John Bright, ‘he adores his maker’, June 1870 — Disraeli the target
Roles reversed
The Fine Art of Political Wit, 1964

Henry Clapp says that Horace Greeley is a self made man, and worships his creator. Springfield Republican, 12 March 1868

Butler’s 1858 poem carries the idea without the epigram: a millionaire who kept the higher law ‘To love his maker, for he was SELF-MADE! / Self-made, self-trained, self-willed, self-satisfied’. Quote Investigator notes Butler’s lines were fiction, criticising nobody in particular.

Primary source, full view
Two Millions by William Allen Butler, 1858, on Google Books
Quote Investigator on “he worships his creator”

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator concludes that ‘based on current evidence the core of this joke should be credited to William Allen Butler who wrote the poem “Two Millions” in 1858’, and that the modern version emerged in 1868 with Henry Clapp criticising Horace Greeley: quoteinvestigator.com ↗.
  • Butler’s poem was written for the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College and delivered on 28 July 1858; Google Books serves the D. Appleton edition in full view: books.google.com ↗.
  • The Disraeli connection runs the other way. QI quotes a June 1870 item — ‘One of Mr. Disraeli’s admirers, in speaking about him to John Bright, said, “You ought to give him credit for what he has accomplished, as he is a self-made man.” “I know he is,” retorted Mr. Bright, “and he adores his maker.”’ Disraeli is the subject of the insult, not its author.
  • QI records that The Fine Art of Political Wit (1964) ‘presented a version of the anecdote that flipped two traditional roles’, making Disraeli the speaker and Bright the target — which is the version now in circulation.
Public domain

Every documented form of this joke predates 1931 by a wide margin — Butler’s poem was published in 1858 and Clapp’s line ran in American newspapers in March 1868 — so all of them are in the public domain in the United States.

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

Often misattributed

This one has been mis-told in an unusual way: not just given to the wrong person, but pointed the wrong direction.

Benjamin Disraeli Roles reversed

In the earliest English telling — June 1870 — the line is said about Disraeli by John Bright, in the form ‘he adores his maker’. QI dates the flip that made Disraeli the speaker to a 1964 book: Quote Investigator ↗.

John Bright later variant

Bright’s version is real but it is neither the first nor this wording: it dates from 1870, two years after Clapp’s, and says ‘adores his maker’: Quote Investigator ↗.

William Cowper No source

Evan Esar’s 1949 Dictionary of Humorous Quotations attributed it to the poet Cowper, who died in 1800; Quote Investigator calls the ascription anomalous and it was copied into later collections: Quote Investigator ↗.

Horace Greeley Subject, not author

The New York Tribune editor was the man Clapp was mocking in 1868. Harper’s reported in July that year that nobody laughed harder than Greeley: Quote Investigator ↗.

The idea is William Allen Butler’s, from 1858; the epigram is Henry Clapp’s, from 1868, and it was aimed at Horace Greeley: Quote Investigator ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

The joke is a small logical trap. If a man is genuinely self-made, then his creator is himself — so praising him for worshipping his creator convicts him of vanity while appearing to compliment his piety.

It arrived when ‘self-made man’ was becoming the central boast of American public life, which is why it found Horace Greeley first: a printer’s apprentice turned newspaper baron who never stopped mentioning it.

To love his maker, for he was SELF-MADE!

Read the full story

Butler wrote Two Millions for Yale’s Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1858; it was reprinted in London in Titan that November and excerpted by reviewers in The Knickerbocker.

After Clapp, the line was reused freely — Junius Henri Browne applied it to the New York financier George Law in 1869, and Howard Crosby printed it in The Phrenological Journal in 1880 crediting only ‘some wag’.

Explore

Filed under

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

Character Humility Success

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 Investigatorquoteinvestigator.com

The full investigation, from Butler in 1858 through Clapp in 1868 to the 1964 role reversal.
Two Millions (1858)books.google.com

Google Books full view of William Allen Butler's poem, the earliest form of the joke.
Wikipedia: The Saturday Pressen.wikipedia.org

The New York literary weekly Henry Clapp Jr. edited.
Memoir of Henry Armitt Brownbooks.google.com

Full view of the 1880 volume in which the jest is used of a political opponent.
Wikiquote: Benjamin Disraelien.wikiquote.org

His sourced and misattributed quotations — neither section carries this line.

The author

About Henry Clapp

Henry Clapp

American editor and wit · died 1875 · editor of the New York Saturday Press

Henry Clapp Jr. edited The Saturday Press, the New York literary weekly that spotlighted Walt Whitman and first published Mark Twain’s first short story in 1865. This line was the piece of talk that outlived him: a letter of reminiscence printed in the Boston Globe in 1875, the year he died, called it his most brilliant piece of wit and set out the exchange with Greeley that produced it.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

“Gleanings and Gossip.” Springfield Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts), 12 March 1868, p. 3. Precursor: Butler, William Allen. Two Millions. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1858, p. 9.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘He Is a Self-Made Man.” “Yes, And He Worships His Creator’?” Last verified 5 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/he-is-a-self-made-man-yes-and-he-worships-his-creator/

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