The line is a joke built on the Yiddish proverb Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht, “Man plans and God laughs.” Barry Popik's citations show the “How do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans” form in a 1992 newspaper with no mention of Allen. The first Allen credit he records is a 1995 Usenet post. No source in Allen's own work has been found for it.
“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans” not Woody Allen; a joke reworking of the Yiddish proverb “Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht” (“Man plans and God laughs”). Via Quotle.info
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Provenance
Where the saying actually comes from
Origin
Yiddish proverb (anonymous)
Yiddish
Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht
Joke form in print
“How do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans” — Kansas City Star, 20 July 1992 (via Popik)
First Allen credit found
Usenet post, rec.windsurfing, 14 November 1995 (via Popik)
Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht. — Man plans and God laughs.
This is the Yiddish proverb and English rendering given on Wikiquote's Yiddish proverbs page. The page cites Israel Furman's 1968 collection, p. 248, and gives “Man proposes, God disposes” as the English equivalent. The “tell him about your plans” wording is a later joke version of the proverb, not a translation of it.
Wikiquote's Yiddish proverbs page ↗ lists Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht, “Man plans and God laughs,” and cites Israel Furman's 1968 proverb collection, p. 248.
Barry Popik ↗ collects English renderings. They include “Man thinks and God laughs” in Fred Kogos's 1001 Yiddish Proverbs (1970) and “A man plans and God laughs” in Chaim Potok's In the Beginning (1975).
Popik's page has the joke form “How do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans” in a 20 July 1992 Kansas City Star profile of Joan Rivers, where it is described as a needlepoint sampler. Woody Allen is not mentioned. Popik ↗
The first credit to Woody Allen on Popik's page ↗ is a 14 November 1995 Usenet post. Allen's sourced Wikiquote page ↗ does not include the line.
This is an anonymous folk saying. It has no single identifiable author, work or first publication, so quotle.info asserts no copyright status for this wording. Individual books that quote or translate the proverb, such as Kogos (1970) or Potok (1975), are separate works with their own rights.
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
Several famous names have been attached to this saying, but none of them originated it. Each is a speaker or a later repeater of an old Yiddish proverb.
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Quote sites, posters, social mediaWoody Allen Most common
No source in his films, books or documented interviews has been produced. Allen's sourced Wikiquote page ↗ does not include the line. Popik ↗ records the Allen credit first in a 1995 Usenet post, and the joke form was already in print by 1992.
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1995 newspaper and book quotationsJohn Chancellor
The NBC newsman used the line after learning he had stomach cancer, but he introduced it as something he had read: “As I read somewhere, ‘You want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.’” (Augusta Chronicle, 15 January 1995, via Popik ↗).
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1992 press profileJoan Rivers
A 1992 Kansas City Star profile describes the line on a needlepoint sampler of hers. It was a saying she displayed, not one she coined (Popik ↗).
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Self-help booksAlcoholics Anonymous
John C. Norcross's Changeology (2012) calls it an AA maxim. That credits a community where the saying circulates, not an author (Popik ↗).
✓The idea comes from the Yiddish proverb Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht, “Man plans and God laughs” (Wikiquote ↗). The “tell him your plans” joke is an anonymous reworking of it (Popik ↗).
Context
Why it sticks to Woody Allen
The saying sounds like Woody Allen. It is a dry one-liner about God and human futility, and it comes from the Yiddish-inflected humor his persona drew on. That fit is the usual way a folk saying gets pinned on a famous comic: the line seems to need an author, and his name is the closest match.
Behind it is an old proverb, Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht. English writers rendered it as “Man thinks and God laughs” and “A man plans and God laughs.” Hillel Halkin's 1987 translation of Sholem Aleichem's Tevye stories has “the more man plans, the harder God laughs” (Popik ↗). The setup-and-punchline version is a modern joke form of the same thought.
Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht — Man plans and God laughs.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Traditional Ashkenazi Jewish saying · author unknown
Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht (“Man plans and God laughs”) is a traditional Yiddish proverb. It is a close cousin of the older “Man proposes, God disposes.” Yiddish proverb collections record it, and Wikiquote cites Israel Furman's 1968 collection. In English it has been rendered as “Man thinks and God laughs” and “A man plans and God laughs.” Over time it was reworked into the question-and-answer joke “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans,” which has no single identifiable author.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented forms
Traditional Yiddish proverb, Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht. English rendering “Man thinks and God laughs” in Fred Kogos, 1001 Yiddish Proverbs (New York: Citadel Press, 1970), 20. Joke form “How do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans” in Frank Rizzo, Kansas City Star, 20 July 1992, D4. Both as cited in Barry Popik, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans,” barrypopik.com, 23 March 2013.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans’?” Last verified 3 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-you-want-to-make-god-laugh-tell-him-about-your-plans/