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Who really said it

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes

Written by Benjamin Franklin 1706–1790 · American printer, scientist & statesman
Verified Free to reuse

Franklin wrote it to the French physicist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy on 13 November 1789, five months before his death. The full sentence is ‘Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.’ It was first printed in The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin, published by his grandson William Temple Franklin in 1817. Franklin did not coin the saying — it was already proverbial — but these are his words.

Last verified 29 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” Benjamin Franklin, letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, 13 November 1789, first printed in The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin (1817), vol. 1, p. 266. The saying was already proverbial: Christopher Bullock used it in 1716. Provenance verified at quotle.info Verbatim: “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

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Provenance

The source

Kind
Private letter
To
Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, French physicist (1720–1800)
Date
13 November 1789
First printed in
The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin (1817), vol. 1, p. 266

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

The famous half is the clause after the semicolon. Franklin was writing about the new United States Constitution, so the joke is a hedge on a specific thing — whether the new government would last — not a general remark about life.

Nothing Is Certain, Except Death and Taxes — Quote Investigator

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ transcribes the sentence from the letter and cites its printing: The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin, Published from the Originals by His Grandson William Temple Franklin, second edition, vol. 1, letter titled ‘On the Affairs of France’, dated 13 November 1789, starting at p. 265 and quoted at p. 266 (London: Henry Colburn, 1817).
  • Wikipedia’s article on the idiom ↗ quotes the identical wording and attributes it to the 1789 Le Roy letter, citing Jared Sparks, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, vol. X (1856), p. 410. Two independent transcriptions matching word for word is what makes this ‘verified’ rather than ‘attributed’.
  • Wikiquote’s Franklin page ↗ carries it in its sourced section with the same date and recipient, and notes the 1817 Private Correspondence printing at p. 266.
  • The recipient is a real and identifiable correspondent: Jean-Baptiste Le Roy ↗ (1720–1800), a French physicist and a major contributor to Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie.
Public domain

Written in 1789 and first published in 1817, both far earlier than the 1931 threshold for the United States public domain. The letter, and this sentence from it, are free to quote and reuse.

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

Franklin said it. He did not invent it.

The attribution to Franklin is correct and the wording is his. What is wrong is the widespread belief that he came up with the idea — ‘death and taxes’ was a stock joke in English decades before he wrote that letter.

Christopher Bullock, 1716 Ancestor, not author

In Bullock’s farce The Cobler of Preston, staged and published in 1716, the drunken cobbler Toby Guzzle says ‘’tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes’. Wikipedia’s article on the idiom calls it the earliest known iteration ↗; its article on the play ↗ calls the afterpiece the origin of the phrase. QI quotes the passage ↗ from a verified scan of the 1716 edition, p. 14.

Daniel Defoe early user

Defoe’s Fair Payment No Spunge (1717) refers to ‘a Proverb or by-Word among us, that there is nothing sure, but Death and Taxes’. That is the strongest single piece of evidence against Franklin as originator: a writer calling it a proverb seventy-two years before Franklin used it see the citation ↗.

Ward 1724, Defoe 1726, Reed 1769, Bridges 1770, The Gentleman’s Magazine 1783 Popularizer, not author

QI lists a chain of printed uses running through the eighteenth century before Franklin’s letter. What Franklin’s usage did was make it famous — QI’s own conclusion is that his 1789 letter ‘helped to popularize the expression’ the full chronology ↗.

Sometimes reassigned to Twain Not Mark Twain

QI records that Twain appears to have used the expression in an 1884 letter to Frank Fuller — and says plainly that it has not verified that report. Either way it is a century and a half after Bullock, so it is not an origin QI on the Twain report ↗.

Franklin wrote these words on 13 November 1789. Christopher Bullock got the joke into print in 1716, and by 1717 Defoe was already calling it a proverb the full investigation ↗.

Context

What he was actually hedging about

The sentence is a judgement on the United States Constitution, which had been in force since 4 March 1789 ↗ — about eight months when Franklin wrote. He tells Le Roy the new government ‘has an appearance that promises permanency’ — and then immediately undercuts himself with the oldest joke about certainty available to him.

He was 83 and had five months to live. The letter went to a friend in a Paris that had stormed the Bastille on 14 July 1789 ↗, four months earlier, which is part of why he was writing at all.

It is a hedge about one specific thing: whether the new government would last.

Explore

Filed under

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

Mortality 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.

Nothing Is Certain, Except Death and Taxesquoteinvestigator.com

The full chronology from Bullock (1716) to Franklin (1789) and beyond, with the printing details for each.
Death and taxes (idiom)en.wikipedia.org

The idiom, the Franklin letter, and the earlier Bullock and Defoe appearances.
Benjamin Franklin — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

The line in Franklin’s sourced section, with the 1817 Private Correspondence page reference.
The Cobbler of Prestonen.wikipedia.org

Christopher Bullock's 1716 farce, where the phrase first appears in print.
Jean-Baptiste Le Royen.wikipedia.org

The French physicist Franklin was writing to — a friend and an Encyclopédie contributor.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklinwww.gutenberg.org

Franklin in his own words, free to read.

The author

About Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

1706–1790 · American printer, scientist & statesman

Benjamin Franklin was a printer, publisher of Poor Richard’s Almanack, experimental scientist, and the diplomat who secured the French alliance in the American Revolution. He signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — which is what makes this letter, written eight months into the new government and five months before he died, worth reading as a verdict rather than a wisecrack.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Benjamin Franklin to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, 13 November 1789, in The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin, Published from the Originals by His Grandson William Temple Franklin, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (London: Henry Colburn, 1817), 265–66.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes’?” Last verified 29 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/in-this-world-nothing-can-be-said-to-be-certain-except/

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