Not his line, and not first his. Quote Investigator finds the joke already in print in April 1946 with no author attached — “Then stop. No use being silly about it” — and traces its ancestor to Stephen Leacock’s 1917 essay. George Burns was credited with a version only in April 1956, and in the milder wording; this “quit … damn fool” form was pinned on W. C. Fields in October 1949, nearly three years after he died. Quote Investigator’s full chronology ↗
“If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again. Then Quit. There's No Use Being a Damn Fool About It” Not George Burns. The joke was circulating anonymously by April 1946; Reader's Digest printed this exact wording under W. C. Fields's name in October 1949, nearly three years after he died. Burns was credited with a milder version ("Then stop — there's no use being silly about it") only in 1956. Its documented ancestor is Stephen Leacock, "Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life," Frenzied Fiction (copyright 1917). Chronology via Quote Investigator.
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to George Burns. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
? 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 failure, wisdom and humility. Theme: "If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again. Then Quit. There's No Use Being a Damn Fool About It". 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 "If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again. Then Quit. There's No Use Being a Damn Fool About It". 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, not the punchline
Earliest known ancestor
Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life
Collected in
Frenzied Fiction by Stephen Leacock — copyright 1917; Toronto edition, S. B. Gundy, 1918
Earliest known form of the gag
Commercial Car Journal, April 1946, “Laugh It Off” — credited only to an anonymous “Fireman”
This exact wording
Reader’s Digest, “Quotable Quotes,” October 1949 — credited to W. C. Fields
W. C. Fields: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.
Reader’s Digest, “Quotable Quotes,” October 1949
This is the first appearance of the exact popular wording in Quote Investigator’s chronology — and it names W. C. Fields, who had died in December 1946. Earlier printings, in April 1946 and twice in 1948, run the milder “Then stop … no use being silly about it” (the 1946 printing drops the “There’s”), with no author at all. George Burns’s name does not enter the record until 1956.
1917 — Stephen Leacock inverts the proverb in his essay Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life: the old motto, he writes, “ought to read, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, quit, quit, at once.’” Read it at Project Gutenberg ↗
April 1946 — the punchline is already circulating with no author. The trade magazine Commercial Car Journal prints “Our Fireman says, ‘If you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then stop. No use being silly about it.’” W. C. Fields was still alive; he died that December. Quote Investigator’s citation ↗
October 1949 — Reader’s Digest runs the “quit … damn fool” wording under Fields’s name, nearly three years after his death. It is the first appearance of this exact sentence in Quote Investigator’s chronology. See the citation ↗
April 1956 — The American Weekly credits George Burns, but with the older, milder wording: “try, try again. Then stop—there’s no use being silly about it.” That is the whole documentary basis for the Burns attribution. The 1 April 1956 citation ↗
No copyright status can honestly be asserted for this wording, because it has no identifiable author: Quote Investigator finds it circulating anonymously in 1946 and 1948 and names no originator, and every named credit since is second-hand. Leacock’s 1917 ancestor is a different sentence; Frenzied Fiction itself is long in the public domain in the United States, but the line on this page rests on nothing so tidy.
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
Passed round like a hat
Three comedians have worn this line, and none of them can be shown to have written it. The dates run the wrong way for all of them.
✕
The credit on this pageGeorge Burns 1956 — and not these words
The only Burns citation Quote Investigator found is The American Weekly of 1 April 1956, and it prints the older, milder gag: “If at first you don’t succeed,” says George Burns, “try, try again. Then stop—there’s no use being silly about it.” That is ten years after the same joke was already in print with no author attached, and it is not the “quit … damn fool” line put under his name today. The 1956 citation ↗
✕
The far commoner modern creditW. C. Fields Posthumous
Fields died in December 1946, eight months after the joke ran anonymously in the April 1946 Commercial Car Journal. The first version under his name that Quote Investigator located is from September 1949, and Reader’s Digest printed this exact wording in October 1949. Quotation sites still carry it as his, some citing a 1968 anthology’s report of an unidentified newspaper interview rather than anything Fields is documented to have written or said. A typical modern citation ↗
✕
Also creditedHenry Morgan 1954
A New Orleans column in October 1954 gave the “then stop … silly” version to radio and television comedian Henry Morgan; Bennett Cerf had already retold it in 1952 as a Fields anecdote about a school graduation speech. The joke attaches itself to whichever comedian is nearest. Both citations ↗
✓The honest answer is that nobody can be shown to have written it. Stephen Leacock printed the ancestor in 1917, the punchline was circulating with no author by April 1946, and Quote Investigator concludes that no particular person stands out as the originator ↗.
Context
Why this joke has no father
Proverb parodies are orphans by design. A line like this one works because everyone already knows the original, so it needs no author — it travels in filler columns, joke pages and newspaper advertisements, and only later gets a famous face bolted on. Between 1946 and 1956 this one was printed as the wit of an anonymous fireman, then in a Lockport, New York real-estate advertisement that ended “your best bet is to BUZZ BURNS,” then as W. C. Fields, then Henry Morgan, then George Burns.
The irony is that the one thing anyone can document W. C. Fields saying about persistence is the proverb played straight. The Associated Press obituary released the day after his death in December 1946 quoted him on losing a lawsuit: “I struck out this time … but next time I’ll hit a home run. Onward and upward’s my motto. Try, try again.”
The first Burns in this story is Justin J. Burns, a Lockport real-estate man whose 1948 advertisement ended “BUZZ BURNS.”
The variants, and how “damn fool” won
Leacock got there first, and he meant it seriously. Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life argues that perseverance is overrated — “Personally, I think there is nothing in it” — before rewriting the motto to read “quit, quit, at once.” Quote Investigator’s hypothesis is that the 1940s quip evolved from those words. Read the essay at Project Gutenberg ↗
The punchline was still unstable in the mid-1950s. American newspapers ran “Then quit. There’s no use getting obstinate about it” in April 1955 and “There’s no use being mule-headed about it” in May 1955, both without an author. “Damn fool” is the version that stuck — and by then it had already stuck to Fields. The 1955 citations ↗
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1869–1944 · Canadian humorist & McGill political economist
Stephen Leacock taught political economy at McGill University and was, for a stretch of the 1910s and 1920s, the most widely read humorist in the English-speaking world. In his essay Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life he takes the persistence proverb apart and rewrites it: the old motto, he says, “ought to read, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, quit, quit, at once.’” He did not write the wording on this page — Quote Investigator names him as the precursor, the joke the 1940s quip appears to have evolved from, not its author.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Best available documentation
Earliest documented ancestor: Stephen Leacock, “Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life,” in Frenzied Fiction (Toronto: S. B. Gundy, 1918; copyright 1917), 245. The exact popular wording appears in “Quotable Quotes,” Reader’s Digest, October 1949, 52, where it is credited to W. C. Fields. Chronology per Garson O’Toole, “Quote Origin: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again. Then Quit…,” Quote Investigator, August 11, 2013.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again. Then Quit. There's No Use Being a Damn Fool About It’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-at-first-you-dont-succeed-try-try-again-then-quit-theres/