No source for this line has been found in Oscar Wilde’s plays, essays, letters or reported talk, and Wikiquote files it under “Disputed,” noting that there is no known source in his works. The earliest similar wording Wikiquote can point to is a 2001 Usenet post that does not credit Wilde — a century after his death in 1900.
“I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there” widely credited to Oscar Wilde, but no source for it has been found in his plays, essays, letters or reported talk. Wikiquote lists it under Disputed, with no known source in Wilde's works; the earliest known similar wording is a 2001 Usenet post that does not credit Wilde, and the Wilde attribution appears on Goodreads on or before January 2008. Traced by Quotle.info.
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Oscar Wilde. 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 themes of friendship, mortality and happiness. Theme: "I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there". 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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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there". 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
Documented source
None located in Wilde’s plays, essays, letters or reported talk
Reference-work status
“Disputed” on Wikiquote’s Oscar Wilde page
Earliest known similar wording
A 2001 Usenet post in alt.atheism that does not credit Wilde
Wilde’s nearest real line
Vera; or, The Nihilists
I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
Unsourced
There is no fuller original context to show, because no original text has ever been found. The quotation is only ever printed on its own, without a work, a date or a witness.
Wikiquote files the line under Disputed on its Oscar Wilde page ↗, stating that there is no known source in Wilde’s works and that the earliest known example of a similar quote is a 2001 Usenet post in alt.atheism — one that does not attribute it to Wilde.
The same entry dates the Wilde credit to Goodreads ↗, on or before January 2008. That page still shows the line under Wilde’s name with more than 9,700 likes (9,713 when checked on 27 July 2026) and no source of any kind, and Goodreads itself warns that community-added quotes are not verified.
Wilde’s own documented joke about the afterlife points the other way. In Act II of Vera; or, The Nihilists ↗, the Czarevitch asks Prince Paul, “And after death?” and Prince Paul shrugs: “Heaven is a despotism. I shall be at home there.”
Wikiquote also notes a resemblance to Machiavelli’s disputed deathbed dream ↗, in which he chooses hell’s company of great thinkers over paradise’s beggars — an account first published in Etienne Binet’s Du salut d’Origene (1629), and not a Wilde source.
No copyright status can honestly be asserted for this wording: it has no identified author, no work and no first publication, so there is nothing to date. Wilde’s genuine afterlife line is a separate matter — Project Gutenberg records the text of Vera; or, The Nihilists ↗ as public domain in the United States.
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Fact-check
How Wilde got the credit
This is a textbook internet attribution: a good joke with no author, handed to the most quotable name available. The trail runs backwards from the meme, and it stops well short of Wilde.
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The attributionOscar Wilde Disputed
Wikiquote places the line in the Disputed section of its Oscar Wilde page ↗ and states there is no known source in Wilde’s works. It records the earliest similar wording as a 2001 Usenet post in alt.atheism, which does not credit Wilde.
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The spreadQuote-aggregator sites No source named
The Goodreads entry ↗ — which Wikiquote dates to on or before January 2008 — carries the Wilde credit and more than 9,700 likes while naming no book, play, letter or interview. The aggregator pages that copied it do the same.
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The older cousinNiccolò Machiavelli Also disputed
Wikiquote notes the line’s resemblance to Machiavelli’s deathbed dream ↗, in which he says he would rather be in hell with great minds than in heaven with the “verminous scoundrels.” That anecdote is itself disputed — first printed in Etienne Binet’s Du salut d’Origene in 1629, long after Machiavelli’s death.
✓There is no Wilde source for this line, and no identified author for it at all. What Wilde did write about the afterlife is the reverse joke, spoken by Prince Paul in Vera; or, The Nihilists ↗: “Heaven is a despotism. I shall be at home there.”
Context
What Wilde actually joked about heaven
The line works because it sounds like Wilde: a short setup, a flick of the wrist, a punchline that makes damnation sound like a better party. That is precisely the problem. Wilde is one of a handful of names — with Mark Twain, Churchill and Einstein — that anonymous internet wit gravitates toward, because a good epigram travels further with a famous signature attached. Wikiquote’s Oscar Wilde page has to maintain whole sections for lines like this one.
Wilde did joke about the afterlife, in print, with a source you can read. In Vera; or, The Nihilists, the play he drafted in 1880, the cynical Prime Minister Prince Paul is asked by the Czarevitch what he thinks about what comes after death. His answer runs the opposite way from the quip credited to Wilde online: heaven is not somewhere he would avoid for lack of company — it is somewhere he expects to fit in disgracefully well.
Heaven is a despotism. I shall be at home there.
The exchange from Vera; or, The Nihilists, Act II
CZARE. And after death?
PRINCE PAUL (shrugging his shoulders). Heaven is a despotism. I shall be at home there.
The passage appears in Act II of the text digitized by Project Gutenberg ↗, set from the privately printed edition of 1902, whose title page notes it is published from Wilde’s own corrected copy. The dates disagree slightly: Wikipedia has Wilde completing a draft in 1880, while that 1902 title page says “This Play was written in 1881.”
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854 and died in Paris on 30 November 1900. He wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest and, as his first play, the Russian melodrama Vera; or, The Nihilists. Because his real epigrams are so quotable, Wilde has become a magnet for lines he never wrote — his Wikiquote page carries long “Attributed,” “Disputed” and “Misattributed” sections, and this heaven joke sits in one of them.
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Cite this
Best available reference
No primary source located. Standing reference: “Oscar Wilde — Disputed,” Wikiquote, accessed 27 July 2026, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde, which records no known source in Wilde’s works, a 2001 Usenet post (alt.atheism, not attributed to Wilde) as the earliest known similar wording, and attribution to Wilde on Goodreads on or before January 2008.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there’?” Last verified 27 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-dont-want-to-go-to-heaven-none-of-my-friends-are-there/