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Who really said it

If that plane leaves the ground and you're not on it, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life

Not quite — the actual line is “you’re not with him” Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein & Howard Koch J. Epstein 1909–2000 · P. Epstein 1909–1952 · Koch 1901–1995 · credited screenwriters
Disputed In copyright

Rick Blaine says it to Ilsa Lund at the airfield in Casablanca (1942), from the screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch. The transcription reads “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him” — not “on it.” Every other word of the popular version is exactly right, which is why the error survives.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“If that plane leaves the ground and you're not on it, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life” Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) in Casablanca (1942), screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch. Often misquoted as "…and you're not on it."

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Warner Bros.). 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 world of Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein & Howard Koch — Academy Award, Best Adapted Screenplay. Theme: "If that plane leaves the ground and you're not on it, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life". 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 that plane leaves the ground and you're not on it, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life". 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 line as filmed

Film
Casablanca (1942, Warner Bros.)
Screenplay
Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, from the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison
Spoken by
Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) — a fictional character — to Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman)
Scene
The airfield farewell, final reel

Rick: I’m saying it because it’s true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.
Ilsa: But what about us?
Rick: We’ll always have Paris. Airfield, final reel

Wikiquote’s transcription of the scene. The popular version swaps “with him” for “on it” and leaves every other word alone.

Audio from the scene
Hear the line as filmed
Casablanca (1942) — full dialogue transcription at Wikiquote

How this was verified

  • The anchor is a transcription, not a memory. Wikiquote’s dialogue page for the film ↗ gives Rick’s airfield speech in full — “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him” — and credits the screenplay to the Epsteins and Koch, from Burnett and Alison’s play.
  • Two further transcriptions were checked independently and agree on the words that matter. A monologue transcript of the scene ↗ also reads “the ground and you’re not with him,” and a page hosting the clip’s audio ↗ transcribes it the same way, though it drops “the ground.” No source consulted rendered it as “on it.”
  • The credits and the copyright come from the AFI Catalog entry ↗, which lists the Epsteins and Koch from the play, and from Wikipedia’s article on the film ↗, which records the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the 1970 copyright renewal.
  • One caution worth recording: this line is not one of the six Casablanca entries on AFI’s 100 Movie Quotes (#5, 20, 28, 32, 43, 67), and it does not appear on AFI’s 400-nominee list ↗ either. The #43 entry from this same scene is “We’ll always have Paris,” two lines later — easy to conflate, so no AFI ranking is claimed for it here.
In copyright

Casablanca was released by Warner Bros. in 1942 and its copyright was renewed in 1970 ↗; it is not due to enter the US public domain until 1 January 2038. Screen writing was work-for-hire, so the rights sit with the studio rather than with the Epsteins’ or Koch’s estates.

Fact-check

Where it goes wrong

Nobody is falsely credited here. The film is right, the scene is right, the speaker is right — and the sentence is still wrong, by two words.

“…and you’re not on it” Misquotation

This is the version that circulates, and it is one swap away from the truth. Wikiquote’s transcription of the airfield scene ↗ reads “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him” — and “him” is Victor Laszlo, Ilsa’s husband, whom Rick names two sentences earlier. “On it” turns a line about a marriage into a line about an aircraft.

Humphrey Bogart / Rick Blaine Speaker, not author

Bogart performed the line; Rick Blaine is a fictional character. Neither wrote a word of it. The screen credit belongs to Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, who won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay ↗ for the script.

Any single screenwriter Contested

Resist the urge to pick a name. The credited writers never worked in the same room at the same time ↗, Casey Robinson did three uncredited weeks on the Rick–Ilsa material, and Julius Epstein later recalled that he and Philip worked out the airport farewell — his own account, decades on, and not independently confirmed line by line.

The film is right, the scene is right, and the sentence is nearly right. Rick says “with him,” not “on it” — see Wikiquote’s transcription ↗.

Context

Why the swap matters

It is the last reel, at a foggy airfield outside Casablanca, and Rick Blaine is talking Ilsa Lund onto a plane she does not want to board. He has just told her she belongs with Victor Laszlo — her husband, the resistance leader, the man whose work she is part of. The threat he uses to close the argument is the sentence everyone remembers: she will regret it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of her life.

The popular version gets all of that music right and fumbles the meaning. “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not on it” makes Rick a man urging a woman to catch a flight. What he actually says is “you’re not with him” — the plane is incidental, the point is Victor. Two words carry the entire moral weight of the scene, and they are the two words that fell off.

Rick isn’t telling Ilsa to catch a flight. He’s telling her to stay with her husband.

Did the line come from the play?

It is a fair question, and the expensive one. Casablanca is an adaptation: Warner Bros. bought Everybody Comes to Rick’s unproduced, for a record $20,000 ↗, from Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, who wrote it in 1940. Famous screen lines often turn out to belong to the novelist or playwright, with the film taking the credit.

As far as the record shows, this one does not. The play is set entirely inside the café and ends with Rick sending Lois and Laszlo to the airport ↗ — the airfield farewell that contains this line has no counterpart on stage, and the Ilsa character there is a different creation, an American named Lois Meredith. That is an observation about the play’s structure rather than a finding from any source that has collated the two texts word for word; the play’s script was not available in searchable form to check directly, so the line is credited to the film without claiming the play has been ruled out sentence by sentence.

Burnett never accepted the small share of glory. He sued unsuccessfully for $6.5 million ↗, contending the play had provided the heart of the film, and Koch — rereading it at 89 — allowed that it had given the movie “the spine.” Neither claim reaches this particular sentence.

Explore

Filed under

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

Courage Doubt

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.

Casablanca (film) — dialogue transcriptionen.wikiquote.org

The anchor source: the airfield scene transcribed in full, giving the line as "you're not with him," plus the screenplay credit.
Casablanca (film)en.wikipedia.org

The writing history — Epsteins, Koch, the uncredited Casey Robinson — the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, the AFI quote rankings, and the 1970 copyright renewal.
Everybody Comes to Rick'sen.wikipedia.org

The unproduced 1940 play behind the film: what it contained, how it differed, and Burnett's long fight for credit.
AFI Catalog — Casablancacatalog.afi.com

Official production credits: screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, from the play.
Casablanca — monologue transcriptwww.whysanity.net

An independent transcription of Rick's airfield speech, used here to cross-check the wording.
The line, as recordedmovie-sounds.org

Audio of the scene — the closest thing to a primary artifact for a question that is purely about wording.

The real author

About the writers

Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein & Howard Koch

Credited screenwriters of Casablanca (1942) · Academy Award, Best Adapted Screenplay

Twin brothers Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch share the screen credit for Casablanca, and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay that came with it. Famously, the three never worked in the same room at the same time: the Epsteins handled structure and dialogue, Koch the politics, and an uncredited Casey Robinson spent three weeks on the Rick–Ilsa scenes before them. Which hand wrote which sentence has been argued over ever since — which is exactly why this line belongs to all three of them and to none of them alone.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch, Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros., 1942); based on the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick’s by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison (1940). Dialogue as transcribed in “Casablanca (film),” Wikiquote.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If that plane leaves the ground and you're not on it, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-that-plane-leaves-the-ground-and-youre-not-on-it-youll

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