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Who really said it

Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction

Not Harry S. Truman — an unsourced modern maxim Origin unknown Earliest documented wording 1947 · exact phrase in print by 2005 · credited to Truman online from 2009
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

No Truman speech, letter, diary or book has ever been produced for this line. Etymologist Barry Popik ↗, who traced the phrase, states flatly that it is “frequently credited to Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), but there is no evidence that he ever said it.” The nearest documented ancestor is a longer, differently worded sentence in John Collier’s The Indians of the Americas (1947); the exact modern wording only reaches print in 2005, in two business and publishing self-help books.

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

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction” commonly credited to Harry S. Truman, but there is no evidence he said it. Etymologist Barry Popik found no Truman source; the exact wording is not documented in print until 2005. The nearest ancestor is John Collier, The Indians of the Americas (1947), p. 281: "Imperfect action is better for men and societies than perfection in waiting, for the errors wrought by action are cured by new action." Via Quotle.info

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

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We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the themes of courage, work and growth. Theme: "Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction". 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.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction". 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

What the record actually contains

Popularly credited to
Harry S. Truman (1884–1972)
Documented Truman source
None. Popik found no evidence he ever said it.
Earliest citation in the phrase family
The Indians of the Americas (1947), p. 281 — a longer, different sentence
Exact wording in print
2005, in two business/publishing books; credited to Truman online from at least 2009

No matter what you do, don’t idle too long wondering about what to do—just do something! Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. 2005 · exact wording

This is one of the two 2005 books in which Popik documents the exact modern wording — Build It Big: 101 Insider Secrets from Top Direct Selling Experts (Chicago: Dearborn Trade Pub.), p. 106. The other is Pat Walsh’s 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published (Penguin, 2005): “In other words, imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.” Neither book credits Truman. Popik’s intermediate citation, from The Daily Herald (Chicago) of 12 September 1985, reads “IMPERFECT action is far better than perfect inaction.”

Barry Popik’s citation chronology for the phrase

How we verified this

  • The finding. Etymologist Barry Popik ↗ investigated the phrase and concluded it is “frequently credited to Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), but there is no evidence that he ever said it.” Popik is a contributor-consultant to the OED, the Dictionary of American Regional English and The Yale Book of Quotations ↗.
  • 1947 — the nearest ancestor. Popik’s earliest citation is John Collier’s The Indians of the Americas (W. W. Norton, 1947) ↗, page 281: “Imperfect action is better for men and societies than perfection in waiting, for the errors wrought by action are cured by new action.” It shares the opening words and the argument, but not the epigram — and Popik draws no causal line between the two.
  • 1985 to 2005 — the wording tightens. Popik records “IMPERFECT action is far better than perfect inaction” in The Daily Herald (Chicago) on 12 September 1985, and the exact modern sentence in two 2005 books. None of these attaches a name to it at all, let alone Truman’s.
  • The sourced record stays empty. The line is absent from Wikiquote’s Truman entry ↗ in every section, and the talk-page question raised on 13 October 2013 ↗ has drawn no reply. Popik’s earliest Truman-credited example is a tweet of 2 November 2009.

No rights status can honestly be asserted for this sentence, because no one has identified who wrote it or where it first appeared — and a quotation with no located source cannot be shown to be public domain. Separately, the nearest documented ancestor, John Collier’s The Indians of the Americas, was first published in 1947 by W. W. Norton, so even that earlier wording falls well after the pre-1931 line for U.S. public domain and should be treated as 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

How Truman got the credit

This is a clean case of a modern motivational maxim reverse-engineered onto a famously decisive president. There is no disputed manuscript, no contested transcript, no rival claimant — just an unsourced line and a name that makes it sound authoritative.

Harry S. Truman No evidence

Barry Popik ↗ — a freelance contributor-consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Dictionary of American Regional English and The Yale Book of Quotations — states the phrase is “frequently credited to Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), but there is no evidence that he ever said it.” The earliest crediting to Truman he records is a tweet dated 2 November 2009. Truman died in 1972.

Wikiquote Absent

The line does not appear anywhere on Wikiquote’s Truman page ↗ — not in the sourced quotes, not in Disputed, not in Misattributed. On the talk page ↗, editor Chad Schultz asked on 13 October 2013 whether Truman originated it, saying he had found “nothing reliable indicating he actually said it.” The question sits there unanswered.

“Imperfect action beats perfect inaction every time” Drifted variant

A second, punchier phrasing circulates under the same name — AZQuotes credits it to Harry S. Truman ↗ as well, with no source. Free-floating wording is a hallmark of a quote with no original text to anchor it.

Truman’s other “famous” lines Recurring

Wikiquote’s Misattributed section ↗ records that the desk sign “The buck stops here!” did not originate with Truman, that he popularised rather than coined “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” and that “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog” apparently comes from Samuel Gallu’s 1975 play Give ’Em Hell, Harry. Truman attracts aphorisms he never produced.

Quote aggregators Unverified

Goodreads ↗ serves the line under Truman’s name while carrying its own disclaimer that “Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads.” That is the whole citation chain most repostings rest on.

The honest answer is that nobody knows who wrote it. Per Popik’s chronology ↗, the exact sentence is not documented in print until 2005 — in Pat Walsh’s 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and in Build It Big: 101 Insider Secrets from Top Direct Selling Experts. It is a piece of late-20th-century business-motivational language, not a presidential utterance.

Context

Why this one sticks to Truman

Truman is a magnet for decisiveness quotes because his actual reputation fits them. He kept a sign reading The buck stops here on his Oval Office desk, and his public image — the plain-spoken Missourian who made enormous decisions quickly — is exactly the personality a slogan about acting before you are ready wants to borrow. A maxim credited to Truman arrives pre-loaded with authority.

But that same magnetism is why Wikiquote’s Truman entry needs a whole Misattributed section ↗. The desk sign was mailed to him, not coined by him; “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” he popularised rather than originated; and “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog” appears to come from a 1975 stage play about him. “Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction” is the same phenomenon, one step further along: it never touched Truman at all.

The line sounds like Truman because we already believe Truman would have said it. That is what a quote magnet is.

The older idea underneath it

The thought itself is genuinely old, which is part of why the modern phrasing feels like a rediscovered classic rather than a workshop slogan. Wikipedia’s article on “Perfect is the enemy of good” ↗ traces the family back through Voltaire, who quoted the Italian proverb Il meglio è l’inimico del bene in his Questions sur l’Encyclopédie in 1770, to Montesquieu around 1726, and to the Duke of Albany in King Lear (1606): “striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.” That article does not mention Truman or this quote.

Popik also flags a modern sibling: “Done is better than perfect,” often credited to Sheryl Sandberg. The idea is common property. Only the specific 14-syllable packaging is recent — and it is that packaging, not the idea, that has been hung on a president who died in 1972.

Explore

Filed under

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

Courage Work Growth

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.

Barry Popik: "Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction"barrypopik.com

The anchor investigation. States there is no evidence Truman said it, and lays out the citation chronology: 1947, 1985, 2005, plus the earliest Truman-credited example he found (a 2009 tweet).
Wikiquote: Harry S. Trumanen.wikiquote.org

The sourced Truman entry. This quote appears nowhere on it — not even under Misattributed, which does document the desk sign, the kitchen line and the Washington-dog line.
Wikiquote talk page: the 2013 queryen.wikiquote.org

Editor Chad Schultz asked on 13 October 2013 whether Truman originated the phrase, noting nothing reliable indicated he said it. No one has answered.
John Collier, The Indians of the Americas (1947)archive.org

Internet Archive scan of the 1947 W. W. Norton book whose page 281 carries the earliest wording Popik documents in this phrase family.
John Collier, U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairsen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the man behind the 1947 sentence: 1884–1968, Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1933–1945, author of The Indians of the Americas.
Perfect is the enemy of gooden.wikipedia.org

The older idea the modern maxim compresses — Voltaire's 1770 use of the Italian proverb, Montesquieu around 1726, and King Lear. It makes no Truman claim.
Goodreads: the quote as it circulateswww.goodreads.com

A representative spreader: the line presented as Truman's, under the site's own notice that quotes are added by the community and are not verified.

Nearest documented ancestor — not the author of the maxim

The 1947 sentence that came first

John Collier

1884–1968 · U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1933–1945

John Collier ran the Bureau of Indian Affairs under Franklin Roosevelt and was the architect of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. In The Indians of the Americas (New York: W. W. Norton, 1947), page 281, he wrote the earliest wording Popik documents in this family: “Imperfect action is better for men and societies than perfection in waiting, for the errors wrought by action are cured by new action.” That is a philosophy of governing, not a motivational slogan — and no researcher has shown a chain connecting it to the short epigram now pinned on Truman, so Collier should be read as the closest known ancestor rather than the author.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Best available documentation

Barry Popik, “‘Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction’,” barrypopik.com, March 28, 2014. Popik finds no evidence Harry S. Truman ever said it; his earliest print citation is John Collier, The Indians of the Americas (New York: W. W. Norton, 1947), 281, in a different and longer wording, with the exact modern phrasing documented in print from 2005.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction’?” Last verified 9 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/imperfect-action-is-better-than-perfect-inaction/

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