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Who really said it

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it

Not Thomas Jefferson — actually Coleman Cox Coleman Cox Early-20th-century American epigrammatist · coined the line by 1922
Disputed Free to reuse

This is a spurious Jefferson quotation. The adage was crafted by San Francisco aphorist Coleman Cox and printed in his 1922 booklet “Listen to This” as “I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.” It was not attached to Thomas Jefferson until 1977, and it appears nowhere in his writings.

Last verified 14 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it” Coleman Cox, Listen to This (1922) — not Thomas Jefferson

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

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

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

In context

Evoking the world of Coleman Cox — Early-20th-century American epigrammatist and businessman, San Francisco. Theme: "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of 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 "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of 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

Where it really comes from

True author
Coleman Cox
Source
“Listen to This”
First published
1922 (Cox credited by name, Jan. 1923)
Misattributed since
1977 — Peter’s Quotations

I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.

Coleman Cox’s original 1922 wording. The smoother modern form — “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it” — is the version later mis-stamped with Jefferson’s name.

Quote Investigator: the Coleman Cox origin

How we verified this

  • The earliest known appearance is in Coleman Cox’s 1922 collection “Listen to This,” and Cox was credited by name in the January 1923 Colorado School of Mines Magazine, per Quote Investigator.
  • The Thomas Jefferson credit first surfaces in Laurence J. Peter’s 1977 compendium Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time — more than a century after Jefferson’s death and half a century after Cox coined the line (Quote Investigator).
  • Monticello’s Jefferson Encyclopedia lists it as a spurious quotation, noting it has never been found in Jefferson’s papers.
  • Over the years the same line has also been floated to Stephen Leacock (1955) and Samuel Goldwyn (1976 biography) — a classic sign of a free-floating aphorism, per Quote Investigator.
Public domain

The saying was first published in Coleman Cox’s booklet “Listen to This” (1922). A work published in the United States before 1931 is in the public domain, so the wording itself is free to use — but it should not be credited to Thomas Jefferson.

Fact-check

How Jefferson got the credit

This is one of the internet’s classic “Jefferson said it” quotations — feel-good, clever, and completely undocumented in his writings. The real trail is short and modern.

Thomas Jefferson Spurious

Jefferson (1743–1826) died nearly a century before the phrase was coined. Monticello lists it as a spurious quotation, and it appears in none of his papers; the credit first shows up in Laurence J. Peter’s 1977 Peter’s Quotations, per Quote Investigator.

Stephen Leacock Also misattributed

A 1955 Louisiana newspaper pinned a version of the saying on the Canadian humorist — decades after Cox’s original, per Quote Investigator.

Samuel Goldwyn Also misattributed

A 1976 biography linked the words to the movie producer without claiming he coined them, per Quote Investigator.

The earliest documented source is Coleman Cox’s 1922 booklet Listen to This; every famous-name version came later, per Quote Investigator.

Context

Why the line sticks

The appeal is the paradox: luck sounds like something that happens to you, yet the punchline hands the credit back to effort. That neat reversal is exactly the kind of self-made-success wisdom that gets pinned on Founding Fathers and moguls to borrow their authority.

In reality it belongs to a jobbing aphorist, Coleman Cox, whose 1922 maxim was clean enough to outlive his name. The idea itself is older still — the proverb “Diligence is the mother of good luck” runs back centuries — but the memorable modern wording is Cox’s.

Luck sounds like something that happens to you — the line hands the credit back to work.

Explore

Filed under

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

Work Success

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: I'm a Great Believer in Luckquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: traces the adage to Coleman Cox by 1922 and dates the Jefferson misattribution to 1977.
I am a great believer in luck (Spurious Quotation)monticello.org

Monticello's Jefferson Encyclopedia classifies the line as spurious and not found in Jefferson's writings.
Jefferson quote page (misattribution in the wild)passiton.com

A representative example of the line being circulated under Jefferson's name.
Goodreads: attributed to Thomas Jeffersongoodreads.com

Shows the popular wording widely credited to Jefferson online.

The real author

Who was Coleman Cox?

Coleman Cox

Early-20th-century American epigrammatist and businessman, San Francisco

Coleman Cox was an American businessman and epigrammatist active in the early 20th century, known for self-published booklets of pithy maxims. His 1922 collection Listen to This is the earliest documented home of this now-famous line about luck and hard work. As the aphorism spread, his name fell away and grander figures — Jefferson, Leacock, Goldwyn — were substituted in his place.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Coleman Cox, Listen to This (1922)

Coleman Cox, Listen to This (San Francisco, 1922). Earliest documented attestation per Quote Investigator, "I'm a Great Believer in Luck. The Harder I Work, the More Luck I Have" (July 21, 2012).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it’?” Last verified 14 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/im-a-great-believer-in-luck-and-i-find-the-harder-i-work

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