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Who really said it

If George Washington Were Alive Today He'd Turn Over in His Grave

Not Samuel Goldwyn — an 1879 joke, printed in this form in 1954 Unknown Anonymous · the joke form is in print from 1879; this wording from June 1954
Disputed In copyright

Quote Investigator ↗ concludes that “the linkages to Samuel Goldwyn and Yogi Berra are not well supported.” The joke — wishing a living man into his grave — goes back to an 1879 novel by William Cuffe, 4th Earl of Desart ↗, where the man failing to turn is the free-trade campaigner Richard Cobden. The George Washington version first appears in June 1954, in a Reader’s Digest piece by the humorist Corey Ford ↗ — and Ford is quoting somebody else, an acquaintance he names only as “Bunny”. Nobody has ever identified her.

Last verified 8 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“If George Washington Were Alive Today He'd Turn Over in His Grave” not Samuel Goldwyn. Quote Investigator concludes that “the linkages to Samuel Goldwyn and Yogi Berra are not well supported”. The joke form appears in The Honourable Ella (1879) by the Earl of Desart, about Richard Cobden. This wording is first documented in Corey Ford's “Are You a Skid-Talker?”, Reader's Digest, June 1954, p. 85, where Ford quotes an unnamed acquaintance he calls “Bunny”. Traced by Quotle.info, quotle.info/who-said/if-george-washington-were-alive-today-hed-turn-over-in-his/

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

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Corey Ford’s estate and The Reader’s Digest Association). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the themes of mortality and change. Theme: "If George Washington Were Alive Today He'd Turn Over in His Grave". 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 George Washington Were Alive Today He'd Turn Over in His Grave". 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

Where the joke comes from, and where this wording does

Earliest form of the joke
The Earl of Desart, The Honourable Ella: A Tale of Foxshire (Hurst and Blackett, 1879), vol. 1, p. 173
Who was in the grave then
Richard Cobden, not George Washington
This wording
Corey Ford, “Are You a Skid-Talker?” Reader’s Digest, June 1954, p. 85
The Goldwyn version
“If FDR was alive, he’d turn in his grave” — Bennett Cerf, Saturday Review of Literature, 10 May 1947

“If George Washington were alive today,” Bunny told me once, “he’d turn over in his grave.” On another occasion she opened a debate with the challenging sentence, “For your information, let me ask you a question.” Corey Ford, Reader’s Digest, June 1954, p. 85

Ford is not claiming the line. He is collecting specimens of what he called “skid-language” — a remark that “ticks away quietly in your subconscious, and suddenly, a few minutes later, your mind explodes with the abrupt realization that something about the remark you just heard was a trifle askew.” The speaker is “Bunny”, given no other name. So the earliest documented printing of this exact sentence is Ford’s, and the person who actually produced it is unidentified. Both passages are quoted from Quote Investigator’s transcription ↗; the 1954 issue is not in a collection we can open.

Quote Investigator: the full 1879 to 1993 chronology

How we verified this

  • 1879 — the earliest instance Quote Investigator ↗ locates, in The Honourable Ella: A Tale of Foxshire ↗ by the Earl of Desart ↗: “If Cobden were alive to hear all the twaddle of the free-traders now he would turn in his grave—at least, I mean he’d be confoundedly disgusted.” The novelist has his character notice the absurdity, which is how we know it was already a joke and not a slip.
  • 1898 to 1940 — the form spreads. The Leisure Hour collects it in 1898 as an Irish bull; the actor George Arliss builds a whole exchange around it in his 1927 autobiography (“your Aunt Harriet is alive and well. How can she turn in her grave?”); and in September 1940 The New Yorker runs a radio broadcaster’s “Were that great French dreamer and writer, Jules Verne, alive today he would turn over in his grave” under the heading How’s That Again? Department. All per QI ↗.
  • 1947 — the Goldwyn association appears, and it is thin from the start. QI ↗ finds Bennett Cerf printing “If FDR was alive, he’d turn in his grave” in the Saturday Review of Literature among remarks “attributed to Hollywood’s most famous dialecticians”, without naming a speaker; and an Associated Press report that October hedging it to the point of confession — “As Sam Goldwyn might have (and probably has) said”.
  • June 1954 — Corey Ford ↗ prints the George Washington version in Reader’s Digest ↗, attributing it to an unnamed acquaintance. Later users include an unnamed conductor in the New York Times in 1960, a supporter of Konrad Adenauer in 1963, and the future president Gerald Ford in 1967, who used it about Abraham Lincoln after the majority leader Carl Albert remarked that Lincoln would be a Democrat today. Yogi Berra’s version arrives last, in 1993, and QI ↗ finds it no better supported than Goldwyn’s.
In copyright

The joke form is public domain — the Earl of Desart’s 1879 novel is well past any term. But that is a different sentence, about a different man. The George Washington wording on this page is first documented in Corey Ford’s “Are You a Skid-Talker?” in Reader’s Digest of June 1954, and a 1954 magazine article is after the 1931 United States public-domain threshold, so we treat the containing work as in copyright. Quote the sentence as reportage of an unidentified speaker, and cite Ford.

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

Two famous mouths, neither of them the source

The sentence is a paradox: to turn in his grave he would have to be dead, which is what the sentence has just denied. Jokes with that shape get filed under whichever public figure is currently famous for producing them, and this one has been filed under two.

Samuel Goldwyn Misattributed

Quote Investigator ↗ finds no direct attribution at all — only Bennett Cerf’s unnamed “Hollywood’s most famous dialecticians” in 1947 and an Associated Press line the same year that gives the game away: “As Sam Goldwyn might have (and probably has) said”. QI’s conclusion is that the linkage is “not well supported”. Wikiquote ↗ does not list it among his misattributions either way.

Yogi Berra Misattributed

A Harvard business historian put a version of it in Berra’s mouth in the New York Times in 1993 — “As Yogi Berra once said of Casey Stengel, if he were alive today he’d be turning over in his grave” — more than a century after the joke first appeared in print. QI ↗ finds this no better supported than the Goldwyn version.

William Cuffe, 4th Earl of Desart Ancestor, not author

His 1879 novel The Honourable Ella ↗ carries the earliest instance QI ↗ has found — but about Richard Cobden, and in a different sentence. He originated the joke, not this wording.

Corey Ford, Reader’s Digest, June 1954 Earliest in print

Ford ↗ is the earliest documented source for the George Washington version — and he attributes it to an acquaintance he calls only “Bunny”. He collected it; he did not claim it.

Gerald Ford, and an unnamed orchestra conductor Repeaters, not originators

The future president used it about Lincoln in 1967, after Carl Albert needled him that Lincoln would be a Democrat today; a conductor quoted anonymously in the New York Times in 1960 used it about Tchaikovsky. Both per QI ↗.

The joke is at least as old as 1879 and this particular wording is Corey Ford’s reporting of an unnamed friend in 1954. Goldwyn is a convenience. Read the full chronology at Quote Investigator ↗.

Context

The joke that needs a famous idiot

The line only works if you assume the speaker did not hear themselves. That is why it needs a name attached: as an anonymous sentence it is merely a mistake, but as Goldwyn’s mistake it is a story. The Associated Press caught the mechanism in the act in October 1947, printing the FDR version as “As Sam Goldwyn might have (and probably has) said” — an attribution that openly admits it is inventing itself.

Corey Ford ↗, the humorist who printed the Washington version, had a name for the effect. He called it skid-language: “like a time bomb; it ticks away quietly in your subconscious, and suddenly, a few minutes later, your mind explodes with the abrupt realization that something about the remark you just heard was a trifle askew.” His interest was in the delay, not in the speaker — which is exactly why he did not bother to give her a full name, and why the actual author of the most-quoted version of this joke is lost.

To turn in his grave he would have to be dead — which is what the sentence has just denied.

The 1879 original, and the long line of the recently deceased

The Earl of Desart’s novel gives the joke to a character arguing politics: “My dear Harry, you don’t understand the rudiments of political economy. If Cobden were alive to hear all the twaddle of the free-traders now he would turn in his grave—at least, I mean he’d be confoundedly disgusted.” The self-correction is the point; the author knew what he had written. Quote Investigator ↗ adds an 1898 Irish-humour collection with the same figure applied to a widow’s husband, and George Arliss’s 1927 memoir, where a friend insists Aunt Harriet “would turn in her grave if she were dead.”

The occupant of the grave keeps changing with the news. QI’s chronology ↗ runs through Jules Verne (1940), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1947), George Washington (1954), Abraham Lincoln (1959 and again in 1967), Tchaikovsky (1960), John Foster Dulles (1963) and Casey Stengel (1993). Only the name in the middle of the sentence has ever really moved.

Explore

Filed under

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

Mortality Change

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 Origin: If George Washington Were Alive Today He'd Turn Over in His Gravequoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Dated citations from 1879 to 1993, and the verdict that the Goldwyn and Berra links are not well supported.
The Honourable Ella (1879) by the Earl of Desartbooks.google.com

Full-view scan of the novel that carries the earliest instance of the joke, about Richard Cobden.
William Cuffe, 4th Earl of Desarten.wikipedia.org

The novelist and peer (1845-1898) whose 1879 novel is the earliest instance Quote Investigator can find.
Corey Forden.wikipedia.org

The American humorist (1902-1969) who printed the George Washington wording in 1954 and coined the label “skid-language”.
Samuel Goldwynen.wikipedia.org

Biography, and the note that Goldwynisms were the inventions of humorists and newspaper editors.
Samuel Goldwyn - Misattributeden.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s list of fake Goldwynisms. This line is not on it, which is worth knowing when you see it credited to him.

Credited, but not the source

Why it gets pinned on Samuel Goldwyn

Samuel Goldwyn

1879 or 1882–1974 · Polish-born American film producer

Samuel Goldwyn, born Szmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, produced the first major American motion picture and put his name into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He is also the standing owner of a genre: the absurdist one-liner that collapses under its own logic. That role is not something he earned by saying such things — Wikipedia ↗ records that “Goldwynisms were the inventions of humorists and newspaper editors” and that many of them predate his career — but it made him the natural address for any joke of this shape that arrived without an owner. Yogi Berra later inherited the same job in baseball, and this line has been filed under both names.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented instance

The joke form: The Earl of Desart [William Ulick O’Connor Cuffe], The Honourable Ella: A Tale of Foxshire (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1879), 1:173. This wording: Corey Ford, “Are You a Skid-Talker?” Reader’s Digest 64 (June 1954): 85, quoting an unnamed acquaintance. Both traced in “Quote Origin: If George Washington Were Alive Today He’d Turn Over in His Grave,” Quote Investigator, 2 May 2015.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If George Washington Were Alive Today He’d Turn Over in His Grave’?” Last verified 8 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-george-washington-were-alive-today-hed-turn-over-in-his/

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