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Who really said it

I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia

Not Sam Walton — actually Dean Alfange Dean Alfange 1897–1989 · New York lawyer & politician, a founder of the Liberal Party of New York
Disputed In copyright

These lines are three consecutive sentences from Dean Alfange’s short prose piece “An American’s Creed” (also called simply “My Creed”), first published in This Week Magazine and reprinted in The Reader’s Digest in October 1952. The Library of Congress’s own quotation dictionary, Respectfully Quoted ↗, prints the passage word for word under Alfange’s name with that publication history. Sam Walton did not write it: it was already in Reader’s Digest in October 1952, and the first Walmart did not open until July 1962.

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

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia” Dean Alfange, from "An American's Creed," first published in This Week Magazine and reprinted in The Reader's Digest, October 1952. Not Sam Walton, and not Thomas Paine. Via quotle.info

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

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Dean Alfange (with the original magazine publishers)). 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 Dean Alfange — American lawyer and politician; a founder of New York's Liberal Party. Theme: "I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia". 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 want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia". 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 documented source

Work
An American’s Creed (also “My Creed”)
Author
Dean Alfange (1897–1989)
First published
This Week Magazine — the syndicated Sunday newspaper supplement; the Library of Congress entry names the magazine but gives no issue date
Reprinted
The Reader’s Digest, October 1952, p. 10, and January 1954, p. 122 (condensed)

I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon—if I can. I seek opportunity—not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia. the creed continues

Wording follows the text printed in Respectfully Quoted (Library of Congress, 1989), which took it from Alfange’s entry in Who’s Who in America, 1984–85, vol. 1, p. 42. That same entry notes the two Reader’s Digest printings were condensed and omitted a pair of clauses, so circulating versions of the creed differ in small details.

Archive object record
Framed creed, Ashland University Archives, cat. 2013-030013
Respectfully Quoted, no. 71 (Library of Congress, 1989)

The paper trail

  • Respectfully Quoted, entry 71 ↗ — the Library of Congress’s dictionary of quotations requested from the Congressional Research Service — prints these three sentences verbatim as part of “Dean Alfange, creed,” cites Who’s Who in America, 1984–85, vol. 1, p. 42, and adds: originally published in This Week Magazine, later reprinted in The Reader’s Digest, October 1952, p. 10, and January 1954, p. 122.
  • The Library of Congress catalogue record ↗ confirms the reference work itself: Respectfully quoted: a dictionary of quotations requested from the Congressional Research Service, edited by Suzy Platt, Washington, 1989.
  • Alfange’s biography ↗ gives the same publication history — the creed first in This Week, condensed in Reader’s Digest in October 1952 and January 1954 — and records that the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge gave him an award for the composition in 1952.
  • Independently of the paper trail, the rival Paine claim collapses on inspection: the complete text of Common Sense ↗ contains not one of the creed’s key words — no “dole,” “utopia,” “uncommon,” “incentive,” “beneficence” or “handout.”
In copyright

“An American’s Creed” is a mid-twentieth-century magazine piece: first published in This Week Magazine and reprinted in The Reader’s Digest in October 1952 — well after the 1931 cut-off for United States public domain. We have not examined copyright-renewal records for the original printings, so the conservative reading applies: treat the creed as in copyright and quote only short passages with attribution.

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 else gets the credit

The creed is one of the most re-credited pieces of American prose in circulation. Two false authors dominate, and a third problem is that the text itself gets rewritten in transit.

Sam Walton Wrong

Circulated on business and entrepreneurship sites as “The Entrepreneur’s Creed” or “The Sam Walton Oath” ↗; one widely shared page runs the full text under the heading “Founder of Walmart” ↗. The chronology alone rules it out: the creed was reprinted in The Reader’s Digest in October 1952, and the first Walmart opened in July 1962 ↗. No Walton speech, letter or book is ever cited for it.

Thomas Paine Wrong

Blogs and inspirational posts hand it to Paine, sometimes with a specific citation — one business blog attributes it to Common Sense (1776) ↗. The full text of Common Sense ↗ contains none of the creed’s distinctive vocabulary: not “dole,” not “utopia,” not “uncommon,” not “incentive,” not “beneficence,” not “handout,” not even the phrase “common man.”

Nobody — but the text has been edited Drifted

The Walton-credited copies end “All this is what it means to be an entrepreneur,” where the Library of Congress text ↗ ends “All this is what it means to be an American.” Smaller changes travel with it — “a calculated risk” for “the calculated risk,” “to fail and succeed” for “to fail and to succeed.”

The Library of Congress’s own dictionary of quotations, compiled from questions put to the Congressional Research Service, prints these sentences under Dean Alfange’s name ↗ and traces them to This Week Magazine, then to The Reader’s Digest of October 1952.

Context

Why this one travels so well

Alfange wrote a piece of Cold War civic rhetoric, not a business manifesto. The creed is a first-person refusal of the welfare state — “I do not wish to be a kept citizen” — published in This Week Magazine, the Sunday supplement that rode along with dozens of American newspapers ↗ and reached millions of households a week. That distribution, plus two Reader’s Digest reprints, put the text in front of an enormous audience with the author’s name attached only in small type.

Text that spreads faster than its byline eventually loses it. By the time the creed reached entrepreneurship blogs and motivational forums, the closing line had been changed from “All this is what it means to be an American” to “… to be an entrepreneur,” and the natural thing to hang a rewritten entrepreneur’s creed on was the most famous American entrepreneur available. Alfange’s own name kept the text alive in one narrow place: it ran at the end of his entry in successive editions of Who’s Who in America, which is where the Library of Congress compilers found it.

Change the last word to “entrepreneur” and the creed needs a new author. Walton was the nearest one to hand.

How the wording drifted

The version circulated under Walton’s name is not quite the one Alfange published. One widely copied posting headed “The Sam Walton Oath” ↗ has “I want to take a calculated risk,” “to fail and succeed,” a semicolon after “dole,” “humble” for “humbled,” and ends “All this is what it means to be an entrepreneur.”

The version quoted on this page — “the calculated risk,” “to fail and to succeed,” a full stop after “dole” — matches the text the Library of Congress prints. Even that source notes the two Reader’s Digest reprints dropped a couple of clauses found in the Who’s Who rendering, so a single fixed “original” wording is not on offer.

Explore

Filed under

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

Courage Freedom Purpose 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.

Respectfully Quoted, no. 71 — Dean Alfangebartleby.com

The Library of Congress / Congressional Research Service quotation dictionary entry: the creed under Alfange’s name, sourced to Who’s Who in America, 1984–85, with the This Week and Reader’s Digest printings.
Respectfully Quoted — catalogue recordloc.gov

The Library of Congress record for the 1989 volume edited by Suzy Platt, confirming publisher, place and date of the reference work quoted above.
Dean Alfangeen.wikipedia.org

Biography and the creed’s publication history: This Week first, condensed in Reader’s Digest October 1952 and January 1954, Freedoms Foundation award 1952.
Common Sense — full textgutenberg.org

Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet in full. Searching it turns up no “dole,” “utopia,” “uncommon,” “common man,” “incentive,” “beneficence” or “handout” — the rival Paine attribution fails on the text itself.
This Week (magazine)en.wikipedia.org

What the creed’s original venue was: a nationally syndicated Sunday newspaper supplement, 1935–1969, carried by 37 Sunday papers in the early 1950s.
Artwork: “a creed by Dean Alfange”ashland.pastperfectonline.com

A framed rendering of the creed catalogued in the John M. Ashbrook political collection at Ashland University Archives, credited to Alfange.
Sam Waltonen.wikipedia.org

Walton’s dates (1918–1992) and the July 1962 opening of the first Walmart — a decade after the creed was already in Reader’s Digest.

The real author

Who Dean Alfange actually was

Dean Alfange

1897–1989 · American lawyer and politician; a founder of New York’s Liberal Party

Dean Alfange was born in Constantinople in 1897 to Greek parents and built a career in New York politics that crossed almost every party line — he took nominations and appointments from the Democrats, the Republicans, the American Labor Party and the Liberal Party of New York, of which he was a founding member. He is remembered today for almost none of that. What survives is a 160-odd-word statement he wrote in the early 1950s, “An American’s Creed,” which the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge honoured in 1952 and which has been reprinted, framed and re-credited ever since.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Source

Suzy Platt, ed., Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations Requested from the Congressional Research Service (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1989), no. 71, “Dean Alfange … creed.” The entry records the creed as originally published in This Week Magazine and later reprinted in The Reader’s Digest, October 1952, p. 10, and January 1954, p. 122.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-want-to-take-the-calculated-risk-to-dream-and-to-build-to/

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