Ali said it aloud to a reporter, splitting it across a pause and then checking that it had been written down. The earliest citation Quote Investigator ↗ locates is Bernie Lincicome’s piece in the Fort Lauderdale News of 14 April 1977, page 6D; QI concludes Ali used the line several times from 1977 or earlier and should receive credit for it.
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life” Muhammad Ali, quoted by Bernie Lincicome, Fort Lauderdale News, 14 April 1977, p. 6D; earliest citation located by Quote Investigator. Verified at quotle.info
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Muhammad Ali — American heavyweight champion & activist. Theme: "He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life". 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 "He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life". 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 earliest printing anyone has found
Spoken
Muhammad Ali, to a reporter, 1977
Article
Ali, Louis: The Spectre of Greatness Past
Reporter
Bernie Lincicome, Fort Lauderdale News
First published
14 April 1977, p. 6D, col. 1
He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.
Fort Lauderdale News, 14 April 1977
Quote Investigator ↗ reproduces the surrounding passage from the newspaper. Lincicome describes Ali as pleased with the philosophical turn his answers had taken and continuing in that vein; Ali delivered the sentence in two halves, breaking after “take risks,” then looked at the reporter’s notepad to ask whether he had got it down.
14 April 1977 — the earliest citation located by Quote Investigator ↗: Bernie Lincicome’s article “Ali, Louis: The Spectre of Greatness Past” in the Fort Lauderdale News, page 6D, column 1, which prints the sentence in Ali’s speech in the wording still circulating today.
29 October 1977 — later the same year, Barbara Reynolds reports in the Chicago Tribune (“Kids meet Ali: man of many faces,” page 1, columns 3 and 4) that Ali used the line while speaking to schoolchildren, and that he presented it as one of his own originals. Transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗.
1980 onward — QI follows Ali reusing the line in a telephone interview published by the Miami News in March 1980 about his return to the ring, and then into the compilation trade: the 1999 anthology What Now? Words of Wisdom for Life After Graduation ↗ carries it under Ali’s name.
Today — the line is everywhere and sourced almost nowhere. Wikiquote ↗ does not list it in either its quotes section or its Misattributed section, and cites no 1977 newspaper for Ali at all. Quote Investigator ↗ concludes that Ali employed the quotation several times starting in 1977 or earlier and should receive credit for it.
Ali spoke the line in 1977 and it reached print the same year — far too recent for the US public domain, where the cutoff in 2026 is first publication before 1931. The words remain Ali’s and the printed transcriptions the newspapers’; the single sentence appears here as a short attributed excerpt for the purpose of verifying its source.
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
Real quote, missing paper trail
This one survives the check — but it is worth walking through, because the paper trail is as thin as a fake’s. The line is credited everywhere, cited nowhere, and missing from the reference a careful reader would try first.
~
AttributionAli — with nothing behind the credit Credited, never cited
The name travels with the sentence; the source never does. BrainyQuote ↗ gives it to Ali with nothing but his birth and death dates, Goodreads files it under him twice, and even the Muhammad Ali Center ↗ prints it verbatim under “Conviction” without saying when or where he said it. A credit repeated a thousand times is not evidence, which is why the 1977 newspaper matters.
~
Reference worksWikiquote’s Muhammad Ali page Not listed
Wikiquote ↗ carries a substantial quotes section and a Misattributed section for Ali, but this sentence appears in neither, and the page cites no 1977 newspaper for him at all. A reader who checks there and finds nothing may reasonably conclude it is invented. It is not.
✕
A different Ali lineAimee Lehto, not Ali Genuinely not his
For contrast, here is what a real Ali misattribution looks like. “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men…” is routinely credited to Ali, but Wikiquote ↗ records that it was written by copywriter Aimee Lehto for a series of Adidas advertisements that superimposed the text over stills of various figures, Ali among them.
✓The sentence is Ali’s. Quote Investigator ↗ traces it to Bernie Lincicome’s report in the Fort Lauderdale News of 14 April 1977, page 6D, finds it again in the Chicago Tribune of 29 October 1977, and concludes that Ali used it from 1977 or earlier and should receive credit for the remark.
Context
A champion selling a line, and knowing it was good
When Ali gave a reporter this sentence in April 1977, he was the reigning heavyweight champion — he had taken the title back from George Foreman in Kinshasa in October 1974 and would not lose it until Leon Spinks beat him in 1978. He was also, by then, a man who had already staked everything on exactly the proposition the sentence makes: in 1967 he refused induction into the U.S. Armed Forces, and it cost him his title, his licence and more than three years of his prime, per his biography ↗.
The detail that makes the 1977 report worth reading is that Ali knew he had written a keeper. Quote Investigator ↗ reproduces the scene: he delivered the line in two halves, then glanced at the reporter’s notepad to check it had been taken down. Later that same year, addressing schoolchildren for the Chicago Tribune, he introduced it as one of his own originals. This was authorship, performed.
He said it in two halves, then checked the reporter had written it down.
Where the line went next
Quote Investigator ↗ tracks Ali reusing the line in a telephone interview published by the Miami News in March 1980, while discussing his return to boxing, alongside Columbus and the space programme as examples of risk-taking. By 1999 it had been absorbed into the graduation-gift genre, appearing under Ali’s name in the anthology What Now? Words of Wisdom for Life After Graduation ↗. That is roughly where it has stayed — endlessly reprinted, and almost never with the 1977 newspaper behind it.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1942–2016 · American heavyweight champion & activist
Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. in Louisville, Kentucky, on 17 January 1942, and took the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston in February 1964 at twenty-two — then changed his name. In 1967 he refused induction into the U.S. Armed Forces on religious grounds, was convicted of draft evasion, stripped of the title and barred from boxing for more than three years; he won it back from George Foreman in Kinshasa in October 1974. He was a professional talker as much as a professional fighter, and he worked at it — rhyming, boasting, and, as here, road-testing an aphorism on a reporter to see whether it landed. He died on 3 June 2016.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this page
Bernie Lincicome, "Ali, Louis: The Spectre of Greatness Past," Fort Lauderdale News, April 14, 1977, 6D, col. 1. Earliest citation located in Quote Investigator, "Quote Origin: He Who Is Not Courageous Enough To Take Risks Will Accomplish Nothing in Life," June 23, 2019. See also Barbara Reynolds, "Kids meet Ali: man of many faces," Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1977, 1, cols. 3-4.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/he-who-is-not-courageous-enough-to-take-risks-will/