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Who really said it

I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery

Not Steve Jobs — a 1930s quip popularized by Ed Wynn Ed Wynn 1886–1966 · American comedian & actor
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

The “richest man in the cemetery” expression was already in circulation by the 1930s. Quote Investigator found its earliest instance in a January 1932 Boston Globe piece on comedian Ed Wynn. Steve Jobs did voice a version — “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me” — in a 1993 Wall Street Journal interview, but he was echoing a decades-old saying, not the exact wording popularly pinned on him.

Last verified 14 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery” Popularly credited to Steve Jobs, but the "richest man in the cemetery" quip traces to comedian Ed Wynn (Boston Globe, 1932) — decades before Jobs echoed a version of it in a 1993 Wall Street Journal interview. Source: Quote Investigator.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Steve Jobs. 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

Evoking the world of Ed Wynn — American comedian & actor. Theme: "I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery". 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.

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Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

Popular wording
“I don’t want to be the richest man in the cemetery”
Earliest attestation
Boston Globe, January 1932 (on comedian Ed Wynn)
Ed Wynn’s phrasing
“I have no ambition to be the wealthiest man in the cemetery”
Steve Jobs’s version
Wall Street Journal, “What’s Next?”, 25 May 1993

Boston Globe headline, 1932: “Ed Wynn Doesn’t Yearn to Be Wealthiest Man in Cemetery.” Steve Jobs, WSJ 1993: “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful … that’s what matters to me.”

The exact popular wording is a floating, proverb-like quip rather than a verbatim line from any single person; Wynn’s and Jobs’s documented phrasings both differ from it.

Newspaper archive
See the 1932 Boston Globe citation on Quote Investigator
Quote Investigator: I Don’t Want To Be the Richest Man in the Cemetery

How we traced it

  • The definitive tracing is Quote Investigator’s 2011 study, which dates the expression to a January 1932 Boston Globe article about comedian Ed Wynn.
  • Per the same study, Wynn’s own phrasing was “I have no ambition to be the wealthiest man in the cemetery,” and later users included Douglas MacLean, Clifford Odets, Skeets Gallagher and Colonel Harland Sanders.
  • Steve Jobs’s documented use — “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me” — appears in a 1993 Wall Street Journal interview cited by Quote Investigator, decades after the phrase was established.
  • Aggregators such as Goodreads attach the Jobs version to his name with no note that the underlying quip predates him by sixty years.

The exact popular wording is a proverbial quip with no single identifiable author — it circulated widely from the 1930s onward, so no clean public-domain source can be tied to it. Ed Wynn’s 1932 phrasing was reported in the Boston Globe, and Steve Jobs’s distinct 1993 wording appeared in the Wall Street Journal (in copyright); neither matches the popular line verbatim.

Fact-check

Why it gets pinned on Steve Jobs

The line rides on Steve Jobs’s anti-materialist mystique, but it is a 1930s show-business quip he merely echoed — and even his own wording differs from the version that circulates.

Steve Jobs echoed, didn’t coin

Jobs said a related line — “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me” — in a 1993 Wall Street Journal interview, but the expression predated him by about sixty years.

Ed Wynn 1932

Quote Investigator found the earliest instance in a January 1932 Boston Globe article, headlined “Ed Wynn Doesn’t Yearn to Be Wealthiest Man in Cemetery.”

MacLean, Odets, Sanders and others

The same study lists Douglas MacLean, Clifford Odets, Skeets Gallagher and Colonel Harland Sanders among the many who used the quip in the decades between Wynn and Jobs.

It’s a decades-old show-business quip — first documented for comedian Ed Wynn in 1932 — not a Steve Jobs original.

Context

A quip with a long pedigree

The sentiment — that a fortune buys you nothing once you’re dead — is old folk wisdom, and phrasing it around a cemetery made it a durable comic line. Ed Wynn used it to poke fun at his own success; later entertainers and businessmen reached for it to signal that work, not wealth, was the point.

Steve Jobs’s 1993 version fit his carefully cultivated image of a founder driven by craft rather than money, which is why the internet later collapsed the whole tradition into a single Jobs ‘quote.’ The tidy attribution erases Wynn and everyone in between.

First documented for a vaudeville comedian in 1932 — not an Apple boardroom.

More on the chain of users

Quote Investigator records the phrase passing through silent-film star Douglas MacLean, playwright Clifford Odets, actor Skeets Gallagher and KFC founder Colonel Harland Sanders, and notes it even surfaced in a 1948 song title per Billboard — a spread that long predates Jobs’s use.

Explore

Filed under

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

Purpose Mortality

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: Richest Man in the Cemeteryquoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative tracing: earliest 1932 Boston Globe attestation to Ed Wynn, plus later users and Jobs’s 1993 usage.
Ed Wynn (Quote Investigator tag)quoteinvestigator.com

Quote Investigator’s collected entries on comedian Ed Wynn, who popularized the cemetery quip.
Ed Wynn — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the American comedian (1886–1966) whose 1930s vaudeville and radio persona spread the phrase.
Goodreads: the Jobs versiongoodreads.com

Typical modern attribution of the “richest man in the cemetery” wording to Steve Jobs, with no earlier-origin note.
Steve Jobs — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the Apple co-founder to whom the quip is now most often credited.

The comedian behind the quip

Ed Wynn

Ed Wynn

1886–1966 · American comedian & actor

Ed Wynn was a vaudeville, radio and film comedian famous as “The Perfect Fool,” whose fluttery voice and self-deprecating one-liners made him a household name in the 1920s and 1930s. Quote Investigator credits his 1932 quip — “I have no ambition to be the wealthiest man in the cemetery” — as the earliest documented form of the saying. He later won an Emmy and earned an Oscar nomination for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959).

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Quote Investigator

Garson O’Toole, “I Don’t Want To Be the Richest Man in the Cemetery,” Quote Investigator, 18 November 2011, citing the Boston Globe (January 1932) on Ed Wynn and the Wall Street Journal (“What’s Next?”, 25 May 1993) on Steve Jobs.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery’?” Last verified 14 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-dont-want-to-be-the-richest-man-in-the-cemetery

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