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Who really said it

If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog

Not Harry S. Truman — an old advertising saw, put in his mouth by a 1975 play Samuel Gallu 1918–1991 · American playwright who wrote the fictional Truman line
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Truman almost certainly never said this. The first known link between Truman and the saying is a line Samuel Gallu wrote for a fictional Truman in his one-man show Give ’em Hell, Harry! (Viking Press, 1975), p. 8 — and even there the wording is “You want a friend in life, get a dog!”, not “in Washington.” The underlying joke is older still and anonymous: it ran as a Philadelphia Inquirer classified ad in 1911 ↗.

Last verified 9 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog” not Harry S. Truman. The Truman Library says it has never been able to confirm or verify that Truman wrote or said it. The first known link to Truman is a line written for a fictional Truman in Samuel Gallu's one-man show Give 'em Hell, Harry! (New York: Viking Press, 1975), p. 8: "You want a friend in life, get a dog!" The underlying saying — "IF YOU WANT A FRIEND / Buy a dog" — ran in a Philadelphia Inquirer classified ad on 19 November 1911; the "in Washington" form is not documented before 1985. Via Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Harry S. Truman. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

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In context

Evoking the world of Samuel Gallu — American writer, producer and director. Theme: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog". 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 you want a friend in Washington, get a dog". 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 nearest thing to a source

Popularly credited to
Harry S. Truman — no source in his own words has ever been located
First known Truman link
Give ’em Hell, Harry!
Publication
Samuel Gallu; New York: Viking Press, 1975, p. 8
Older ancestor
“IF YOU WANT A FRIEND / Buy a dog.” — Philadelphia Inquirer classified ad, 19 November 1911, p. 2

Banks, boy, there’s a bunch of crooks for you. They’re happy to lend you money when you prove you don’t need it. You want a friend in life, get a dog! Fictional Truman, 1975

This is Gallu’s stage Truman, not the historical one — and note the wording: “in life,” not “in Washington.” The Washington form is a later drift, dated by Barry Popik to at least 1985.

Quote Investigator: If You Want a Friend in Washington, Get a Dog

The paper trail

  • Quote Investigator ↗ concludes it is “very unlikely that it was said by Harry Truman,” and identifies Samuel Gallu’s 1975 Give ’em Hell Harry (Viking Press, p. 8) as containing “the first known connection between Truman and the saying” — there rendered “You want a friend in life, get a dog!”
  • Barry Popik ↗ documents the saying “cited in print since at least 1911,” beginning with a Philadelphia Inquirer classified ad reading “IF YOU WANT A FRIEND / Buy a dog,” and dates the “Washington” form to at least 1985. He also reproduces Ralph Keyes’s verdict in The Quote Verifier (2006), p. 47: “An old saw put in Harry Truman’s mouth.”
  • The Harry S. Truman Library has never been able to confirm it. Supervisory archivist Sam Rushay told PolitiFact ↗ so directly, and archivist Randy Sowell had already told TeleRead ↗ in 2008 that the play “isn’t footnoted, so we have no idea where he got this saying,” adding: “The truth is that the Trumans were not dog owners.”
  • English Wikiquote ↗ lists the line in its Misattributed section, noting it was quoted as Truman’s by both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and that “prior to Gallu’s play there is no actual indication Truman ever said this.”

No rights status can honestly be asserted for the popular wording, because no author or first publication has ever been identified for it. The oldest documented ancestor — an anonymous 1911 newspaper classified advertisement — would long since be in the public domain, but it is not this sentence. The nearest documented relative that does have an author, Samuel Gallu’s “You want a friend in life, get a dog!” from Give ’em Hell, Harry! (Viking Press, 1975), is a different line and remains in copyright.

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 gets the credit, and who earned it

This is a textbook case of a joke climbing the ladder of fame: an anonymous advertising slogan becomes a comedian’s wisecrack, becomes a playwright’s line for a fictional president, and finally becomes the real president’s own words — quoted back at Washington by senators, presidents and candidates.

Harry S. Truman Misattributed

Sam Rushay, supervisory archivist at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, told PolitiFact: “We have never been able to confirm or verify that President Truman ever wrote or said, ‘If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.’” PolitiFact rated the attribution False ↗. The Trumans were not dog owners — a cocker spaniel puppy given to them at the White House was passed on to the president’s doctor, and Ralph Keyes records in The Quote Verifier (2006), p. 47 that Harry and Bess “gave away the two that were given to them while they lived in the White House.”

Samuel Gallu’s stage Truman Where it started

Ralph Keyes traced the attribution to Gallu’s 1975 one-man show, and Quote Investigator confirms it as the first known connection between Truman and the saying ↗. Truman Library archivist Randy Sowell noted the play is not footnoted, so where Gallu got the line is unknown — and it was published in 1975, three years after Truman died.

Carl Icahn and Gordon Gekko Parallel strand

A Wall Street branch of the same joke. Time reported in 2008 that the “buy a dog” line is most often credited to corporate raider Carl Icahn in the mid-1980s; the version audiences actually remember is Michael Douglas’s Gekko in Wall Street (1987) — “And if you need a friend, get a dog” — written by Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone, both documented by Quote Investigator ↗.

Lord Byron Also unverified

Quote Investigator closes its article with an 1841 citation from Catherine Sinclair’s Modern Flirtations that credits the sentiment to Byron, while explicitly cautioning that “the attribution may be questionable” ↗. Treat it as an early sighting of the idea, not a source.

The honest answer: nobody owns this sentence. It is an anonymous American advertising saw, in print by 1911, that a 1975 play attached to a president who had already been dead for three years — and no researcher, including Barry Popik ↗ or the Truman Library itself, has ever found Truman saying it.

Context

The president who gave the dog away

The line lands because it sounds like Truman — blunt, funny, faintly bitter about the town that chewed him up. The trouble is that Truman was, by every account his own library can find, not a dog person. A cocker spaniel puppy named Feller arrived at the White House as a gift and was quietly rehomed with the president’s physician; a 1948 syndicated column noticed and needled him for it, reporting that Truman admitted “under pressure” that the pup was living elsewhere, and adding that this was “bound to cost Harry more votes.” A reader put the obvious question to columnist E. V. Durling the following year and got the domestic answer: Mrs. Truman thought dogs were too much trouble to care for. Both clippings are reproduced by Quote Investigator ↗.

So the aphorism arrived backwards: not from a lonely president reaching for his dog, but from a playwright writing a president who never had one. Once Gallu’s stage Truman said it, the sentence drifted — “in this life” in a 1975 Los Angeles Times review, “in this world” in a 1978 nursing textbook, and finally “in Washington” by the mid-1980s, at which point it became too useful to politicians to ever go away. Senator Nancy Kassebaum handed it to Alan Greenspan as Truman’s own words in a 1987 New York Times letter; George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton both repeated it as Truman’s, per Wikiquote ↗; John Kasich was still quoting it on the 2016 campaign trail.

“The truth is that the Trumans were not dog owners.” — Randy Sowell, Truman Library archivist

How the wording drifted, decade by decade

1911 — A Philadelphia Inquirer classified ad (19 Nov, p. 2, col. 6) reads simply: “IF YOU WANT A FRIEND / Buy a dog.” Barry Popik traces further printings through 1919, 1924, 1925 and a 1937 Hartford Courant piece prompted by a sales-kennel sign.

1941 — The Hollywood version: comedian Frank Fay’s advice to the newly arrived French director René Clair — “If you’re going to stay in this town and want a friend, go out and buy yourself a dog” — printed in the Dunkirk Evening Observer. Popik notes the “Hollywood” version never caught on.

1975 — Gallu’s stage Truman: “You want a friend in life, get a dog!” A Los Angeles Times stage review the same year already renders it “If you want a friend in this life, get a dog” and treats it as characterisation of the real man.

1978–1987 — A nursing textbook attributes “If you want a friend in this world, get a dog” directly to Truman. Popik dates the “Washington” form to at least 1985; by June 1987 Senator Kassebaum is quoting “If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog” as Truman’s in the New York Times.

Explore

Filed under

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

Friendship Power Truth

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: If You Want a Friend in Washington, Get a Dogquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Concludes it is “very unlikely that it was said by Harry Truman,” traces the Truman link to Gallu’s 1975 play, and reproduces the 1948 Feller clipping, the 1975 LA Times review, the 1978 nursing-textbook attribution and Kassebaum’s 1987 NYT letter.
Barry Popik: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”barrypopik.com

The deepest citation trail: the 1911 Philadelphia Inquirer classified ad, printings from 1919 to 1941, the 1975 Gallu text, and the dating of the “Washington” form to at least 1985. Also reproduces Ralph Keyes’s verdict from The Quote Verifier.
Harry S. Truman — Wikiquote (Misattributed)en.wikiquote.org

Files the line under Misattributed, notes that George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton both quoted it as Truman’s, and points to Gallu’s play as the apparent origin.
PolitiFact: John Kasich misquotes Truman on dogspolitifact.com

Rates the attribution False and carries the on-the-record statement from Sam Rushay, supervisory archivist at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum.
TeleRead: Presidential library unable to confirm the get-a-dog quoteteleread.com

David Rothman’s 2008 write-up, quoting Truman Library archivist Randy Sowell on the Gallu play, its lack of footnotes, and the fact that the Trumans were not dog owners.
Give ’em Hell, Harry! — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Background on the 1975 one-man show starring James Whitmore, the vehicle that carried Gallu’s fictional Truman — and his dog line — to a national audience.

The author

About Samuel Gallu

Samuel Gallu

1918–1991 · American writer, producer and director

Samuel Gallu wrote and produced across film, theatre and television, but he is remembered above all for Give ’em Hell, Harry!, the one-man Truman show that James Whitmore carried to the screen in 1975. Gallu’s script was not footnoted, so nobody — the Truman Library included — knows where he found the dog line he handed his stage president. He is not the author of the saying, only the first documented person to attach it to Truman; the joke itself was circulating in American newspapers and kennel signage decades before he wrote it down.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Nearest documented source

Samuel Gallu, Give 'em Hell, Harry! (New York: Viking Press, 1975), 8 — identified by Quote Investigator as the first known connection between Truman and the saying. The saying itself is documented in print at least as early as a Philadelphia Inquirer classified advertisement, 19 November 1911, p. 2 (Barry Popik). No source in Truman's own words has ever been located.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog’?” Last verified 9 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-you-want-a-friend-in-washington-get-a-dog/

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