The earliest instance Quote Investigator can find of this family of sayings ran in Bennett Cerf’s syndicated column “Try and Stop Me” on 8 July 1959, quoting Maugham second-hand through an unnamed visitor: it is not enough to have achieved personal success, “One’s best friend must also have failed.” Gore Vidal only picked up credit from December 1976 — and the wording usually printed under his name, “Others must fail,” was already in Iris Murdoch’s novel The Black Prince in 1973.
“It Is Not Enough to Succeed; One's Best Friend Must Fail” commonly credited to Gore Vidal, but the earliest documented form is from Bennett Cerf's column of 8 July 1959, quoting W. Somerset Maugham second-hand; the "others must fail" wording usually printed under Vidal's name was already in Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince (1973), three years before the line was ever credited to Vidal. Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “Now that I've grown old, I realize that for most of us it is not enough to have achieved personal success. One's best friend must also have failed.”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Gore Vidal. Use the credit shown above instead.
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? 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 W. Somerset Maugham — English novelist, playwright and short-story writer. Theme: "It Is Not Enough to Succeed; One's Best Friend Must Fail". 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 "It Is Not Enough to Succeed; One's Best Friend Must Fail". 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 earliest documented instance
Earliest documented instance
Bennett Cerf, “Try and Stop Me” (syndicated column), 8 July 1959
Credited to
W. Somerset Maugham — second-hand, through an unnamed visitor
Where ‘others must fail’ begins
Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince (1973)
First credited to Gore Vidal
December 1976, at a London requiem for the MP Tom Driberg
Octogenarian Somerset Maugham told a visitor to his French Riviera estate recently, “Now that I’ve grown old, I realize that for most of us it is not enough to have achieved personal success. One’s best friend must also have failed.”
Second-hand
Bennett Cerf’s “Try and Stop Me” column, as transcribed from the Daily Messenger of Canandaigua, New York, 8 July 1959, by Quote Investigator ↗. Note the chain: a columnist reporting what an unnamed visitor said Maugham said. Maugham’s biographer reprinted the remark in 1961 and warned that “one is not obliged to accept as authentic every statement made by a columnist.”
1959 — Bennett Cerf prints the longest form in his syndicated column on 8 July, crediting Maugham second-hand. This is the earliest instance Quote Investigator ↗ can find anywhere in the family.
1964–1973 — The credit slides to La Rochefoucauld in Merle Miller, in Francis Ford Coppola and in Wilfrid Sheed’s New York Times piece of 4 February 1973, which discusses Gore Vidal’s envy and still does not credit Vidal with the line (chronology and transcriptions ↗).
1973 — Iris Murdoch’s narrator in The Black Prince ↗ uses the “others must fail” form and attributes it vaguely to “some clever writer (probably a Frenchman)” — on the evidence of the page 98 passage transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗, the first known appearance of that wording.
December 1976 — The Rev. Gerard Irvine quotes it at a London requiem for Tom Driberg as “the cynical maxim of a clever friend”, and the credit to Gore Vidal begins; Wikiquote ↗ still files it under Vidal’s 1970s quotations on that citation.
The one-line form circulating today matches no documented source, so no rights status can honestly be asserted for it. Every wording that is documented is modern — Bennett Cerf’s 1959 newspaper column, Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince (1973, Chatto & Windus), Gerard Irvine’s 1976 address — and each would belong to its own author or publisher rather than being free to 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
Everyone this has been pinned on
This is one of the most frequently reassigned epigrams in circulation. Quote Investigator’s chronology shows it moving between five different owners across three decades, with the credit landing on whoever was the era’s best-known cynic.
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The popular creditGore Vidal From December 1976
Quotation expert Nigel Rees records the version “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” being attributed to Vidal after a London requiem for Tom Driberg in December 1976, at which the Rev. Gerard Irvine quoted it as “the cynical maxim of a clever friend” — not as Vidal’s. The Yale Book of Quotations records a Rhode Island newspaper crediting Vidal on 3 November 1978. But the identical wording had already been printed by Iris Murdoch in 1973 (Quote Investigator ↗).
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The 17th-century creditFrançois de La Rochefoucauld 1964, 1972, 1973
Merle Miller (1964), Francis Ford Coppola (1972, misspelling the name “La Rochefoucault”) and Wilfrid Sheed in the New York Times (1973) all assigned it to the French epigrammatist. Quote Investigator concludes the sayings should not be ascribed to him: his actual maxims ↗ are different ones, about finding something not displeasing in a friend’s adversity and having strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
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The boardroom creditGenghis Khan 1988
Oracle’s Larry Ellison told the New York Times on 28 February 1988, paraphrasing what he called the Mongol leader’s philosophy: “It is not sufficient that I succeed – all others must fail.” The attribution is Ellison’s framing of a saying already thirty years in circulation (Quote Investigator ↗).
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A Broadway variantDavid Merrick October 1979
A newspaper columnist credited the Broadway producer with a distinct instance in October 1979: “It’s not enough that I should succeed, others should fail.” One more owner in a line of them (Quote Investigator ↗).
✓No documented source contains the popular sentence in the form people share it. The earliest instance Quote Investigator ↗ can find is a longer, second-hand remark credited to Somerset Maugham in 1959 — and the compressed modern version welds that ‘best friend’ half onto a ‘others must fail’ half that first shows up in Iris Murdoch in 1973.
Context
Why this one keeps changing owners
Cynical epigrams drift towards whoever is most famous for being cynical. This one has been handed to a French duke, an English novelist, a Broadway producer, a Mongol warlord and — most durably — to Gore Vidal, who was the right shape for it: a professional wit with a public register of feuds. But the saying was already in print in 1959, long before Vidal’s name was attached to it in December 1976.
There are really two half-sayings here, and the popular one-liner welds them together. The 1959 branch supplies the “best friend” half; the “it is not enough to succeed … others must fail” half first appears, on Quote Investigator’s transcription ↗ of page 98, in Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince ↗ in 1973, spoken by a narrator who cheerfully credits it to nobody in particular. Neither branch, in the wording people now share, has a documented author.
Some clever writer (probably a Frenchman) has said: it is not enough to succeed; others must fail.
Two details that make the Vidal credit hard to sustain
Maugham’s own biographer, Richard A. Cordell, reprinted the 1959 remark in a 1961 study and called it “a pure La Rochefoucauld” — meaning it sounded like the Frenchman, not that he wrote it — then added that “one is not obliged to accept as authentic every statement made by a columnist.” That caution was misread for decades as a credit to La Rochefoucauld himself, per Quote Investigator ↗.
In the New York Times Book Review of 4 February 1973, Wilfrid Sheed wrote a passage specifically about Gore Vidal’s envy — and then quoted “it is not enough to succeed; a friend must also fail” while assigning it to La Rochefoucauld, not to Vidal. A writer discussing Vidal’s wit in print, three years before the Vidal credit begins, did not think the line was Vidal’s (transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗).
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1874–1965 · English novelist, playwright and short-story writer
W. Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English novelist, playwright and short-story writer whose lucid, unsentimental prose made him one of the most widely read authors of his era — Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, Cakes and Ale, The Razor’s Edge. He read La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims as a teenager in Heidelberg, and his biographer argued that the echo ran through his work for sixty years, which is exactly why a maxim-shaped remark sounded plausible in his mouth. Even so, the 1959 remark reached print second-hand through a newspaper columnist, and Maugham’s own biographer cautioned against treating a columnist’s report as authentic — so the line is credited to him, not documented from him.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented instance
Bennett Cerf, “Try and Stop Me,” Daily Messenger (Canandaigua, NY), 8 July 1959, p. 12, col. 7 — the earliest instance known to Quote Investigator, quoting W. Somerset Maugham second-hand. Chronology: Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: It Is Not Enough to Succeed; One’s Best Friend Must Fail,” 6 August 2012.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It Is Not Enough to Succeed; One’s Best Friend Must Fail’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-is-not-enough-to-succeed-ones-best-friend-must-fail/