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Who really said it

I Have Never Killed Any One, But I Have Read Some Obituary Notices with Great Satisfaction

Not Mark Twain — actually Clarence Darrow Clarence Darrow 1857–1938 · American defense lawyer and civil libertarian
Disputed In copyright

This is Darrow’s wording, word for word, from his 1932 autobiography The Story of My Life. He had been sharpening the same joke for a decade — a looser version in a 1922 speech, another in 1926 congressional testimony against the death penalty — before it settled into the one-liner people now pin on Twain, who died in 1910.

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I Have Never Killed Any One, But I Have Read Some Obituary Notices with Great Satisfaction” Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932), ch. 10 "Child Training" — "I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction." Widely misattributed to Mark Twain, who died in 1910. Verified via Quote Investigator, Wikiquote and Snopes. quotle.info

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

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Estate of Clarence Darrow; originally published by Charles Scribner’s Sons). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Clarence Darrow — American defense lawyer, agnostic, and opponent of capital punishment. Theme: "I Have Never Killed Any One, But I Have Read Some Obituary Notices with Great Satisfaction". 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 "I Have Never Killed Any One, But I Have Read Some Obituary Notices with Great Satisfaction". 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 source

Work
The Story of My Life
First published
1932 · Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York
Location
Ch. 10, “Child Training” — page 86 in the Da Capo Press reprint cited by Quote Investigator
Earliest version
Speech, “Crime,” Illinois Conference on Public Welfare, 13 November 1922

All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction. Ch. 10, “Child Training”

The famous sentence is the second half of the passage. Wikiquote’s sourced entry prints a longer run of the paragraph, which begins “Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men” — the argument the joke is serving.

Autobiography
Borrow a 1932 printing at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator: the 1922 to 1932 chronology

How the line took shape

  • 13 November 1922 — addressing the Illinois Conference on Public Welfare in a speech titled “Crime,” Darrow says he never killed anybody but has had “a great deal of satisfaction over many obituary notices” that he has read. This is the earliest instance Quote Investigator located ↗.
  • February 1926 — testifying to a US House committee on abolishing capital punishment in the District of Columbia, Darrow argues “we are all murderers at heart” and repeats the line. The New York Times report of 2 February 1926 renders it as “I have often read obituary notices with considerable satisfaction,” a wording that differs from the government transcript — both are quoted and cited by QI ↗.
  • 1932 — the polished form appears in The Story of My Life, ch. 10, where Wikiquote records it in its sourced section ↗ with the surrounding paragraph intact.
  • 2011 onward — a loosened version begins circulating online credited to Mark Twain; Snopes rates that credit “Incorrect Attribution” ↗ and points back to Darrow’s 1932 sentence.
In copyright

The sentence in this exact form was first published in The Story of My Life in 1932, which falls after the 1931 cutoff quotle.info uses for the US public domain — so we treat it as in-copyright and quote it only as the subject of this fact-check. Darrow’s earlier and differently worded 1922 and 1926 versions appear in state and federal publications that are themselves free of restriction, but those are not this wording.

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

Who it gets pinned on

Twain is the default owner of any unclaimed American wisecrack, and this one has been his online since about 2011 — usually in a reworded form that Darrow never wrote either.

Mark Twain Most common

Twain died on 21 April 1910, twelve years before Darrow’s earliest known use of the joke. Wikiquote files a reworded version in Twain’s Misattributed section ↗ and identifies it as a misquotation of Darrow.

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure” Reworded

This is the form that circulates on social media under Twain’s name. Snopes rates it “Incorrect Attribution” ↗ and traces it to Darrow’s 1932 sentence — it is neither Twain’s nor Darrow’s actual wording.

Winston Churchill Rarer

Churchill is the other standing magnet for orphaned epigrams; Wikiquote’s Darrow entry notes ↗ that the misquoted version has been credited to him among others.

The sentence, exactly as written above, is Clarence Darrow’s — published in The Story of My Life in 1932 and traced back to a 1922 speech by Quote Investigator ↗.

Context

Why he said it

Darrow was not making a dinner-party joke. He was making an argument about the death penalty, and the line was the hinge of it. Testifying before a House committee in February 1926 on abolishing capital punishment in the District of Columbia, he told the room that everyone is a murderer at heart — that he had never taken a life himself, but had read obituary notices with satisfaction, and so had they. If the impulse is universal, he was saying, the state has no clean standing to kill for it.

The 1932 memoir version keeps the same logic and cuts the words. It arrives after the sentence “All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead” — the setup that makes the punchline an indictment rather than a wisecrack. Stripped of that setup and repotted under Twain’s name, it reads as harmless mischief, which is roughly the opposite of what Darrow meant.

Darrow’s joke was an argument against executions. Twain’s version is just a joke.

How the wording drifted

1922 — the long form: he never killed anybody, but has “had a great deal of satisfaction over many obituary notices.” Funny, but slack.

1926 — tighter, and pointed at Congress: “I never killed anybody, but I often read an obituary notice with great satisfaction.”

1932 — the finished epigram, and the wording that travels today.

2007 onward — anthologies begin printing a “pleasure” variant, still credited to Darrow. By 2011 the same shape is circulating online under Twain’s name, usually as “I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

Explore

Filed under

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

Mortality Truth Character

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: the full chronologyquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Tracks Darrow’s wording through an 1908 precursor, his 1922 speech, the 1926 hearing, the New York Times report, and the 1932 memoir, and concludes the line is his.
Wikiquote: Clarence Darrowen.wikiquote.org

Carries the sentence in its sourced section under “The Story of My Life (1932)”, ch. 10 “Child Training”, with the full surrounding passage.
Wikiquote: Mark Twain (Misattributed)en.wikiquote.org

Lists a reworded form of the line in Twain’s Misattributed section and identifies it as a misquotation of Darrow.
Snopes: Twain and the obituaries quotewww.snopes.com

Rates the Twain credit “Incorrect Attribution” and traces the meme wording to Darrow’s 1932 sentence.
The Story of My Life (1932 printing)archive.org

A scanned 1932 printing of Darrow’s autobiography, borrowable through the Internet Archive’s lending library.
Clarence Darrowen.wikipedia.org

Biography confirming his dates (18 April 1857 – 13 March 1938) and that The Story of My Life was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1932.

The real author

Who was Clarence Darrow?

Clarence Darrow

1857–1938 · American defense lawyer, agnostic, and opponent of capital punishment

Clarence Darrow was the most famous defense attorney in America, remembered for the Leopold and Loeb case, the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial, and his defense of Ossian Sweet. He built a career on the argument that no one is purely innocent — that the impulses society punishes are present in everybody — which is exactly the argument the obituary line was written to serve. He published The Story of My Life in 1932, six years before his death.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932), ch. 10, “Child Training.” Quote Investigator quotes the sentence from page 86 of the Da Capo Press reprint of the 1932 edition.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I Have Never Killed Any One, But I Have Read Some Obituary Notices with Great Satisfaction’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-have-never-killed-any-one-but-i-have-read-some-obituary/

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