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Who really said it

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all

Written by Dale Carnegie 1888–1955 · American writer & public-speaking teacher
Verified In copyright

This one is really his. Quote Investigator ↗ traces the sentence to a Carnegie newspaper column headlined “Being Discouraged Never Pays,” printed in The Marshall News Messenger of Marshall, Texas on 29 January 1942 — a piece about the inventor Lee de Forest, with this line as its moral. QI’s conclusion is flat: Carnegie deserves credit for the statement, which he wrote in that 1942 column. What is usually attached to it is not the column but a later book.

Last verified 25 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all” Genuinely Dale Carnegie. He wrote it in his newspaper column "Being Discouraged Never Pays," printed in The Marshall News Messenger (Marshall, Texas) on 29 January 1942 — a column about the inventor Lee de Forest — and it was reprinted in Dale Carnegie's Scrapbook (1959), page 199. It is often credited to How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948) — a citation that traces to a 2003 business-quotation compilation; Quote Investigator documents no 1948 printing and rests its conclusion on the 1942 column. Source: Quote Investigator.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Dale Carnegie / Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc.). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Dale Carnegie — American writer & public-speaking teacher. Theme: "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all". 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 "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all". 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 column it comes from

Work
“Being Discouraged Never Pays” — a Dale Carnegie newspaper column
Documented printing
The Marshall News Messenger, Marshall, Texas, 29 January 1942, page 6, column 5
Subject of the column
Lee de Forest, inventor of the Audion vacuum tube
Reprinted
Dale Carnegie’s Scrapbook: A Treasury of the Wisdom of the Ages (1959), page 199

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. That plan has worked for thousands of others; it may work for you, too. Dale Carnegie’s column, 29 January 1942

Both sentences are from the 1942 column as excerpted by Quote Investigator ↗; the famous line is the first of the pair, and the second is the practical turn Carnegie put on it. The newspaper page itself sits behind the Newspapers.com paywall, which is where QI consulted it — there is no free scan of this issue to link.

Quote Investigator’s citation for the 1942 column

How it was traced

  • Quote Investigator ↗ reports that in 1942 Carnegie published a newspaper column about the U.S. inventor Lee de Forest, who met technological, financial and legal obstacles before succeeding with the Audion vacuum tube, and that this sentence is the point the column draws from his story. The citation given is The Marshall News Messenger, Marshall, Texas, 29 January 1942, page 6, column 5, under the headline “Being Discouraged Never Pays,” consulted via Newspapers.com.
  • The same investigation records a second printing after Carnegie’s death — page 199 of Dale Carnegie’s Scrapbook: A Treasury of the Wisdom of the Ages (1959), edited by his widow Dorothy Carnegie, verified with scans (Quote Investigator ↗). The catalog record for the 1959 Simon and Schuster edition ↗ describes that book as edited, with a selection of Dale Carnegie’s own writings, by Dorothy Carnegie.
  • No rival originator turned up. Carnegie’s Wikiquote page ↗ lists the line among his quotations rather than under any disputed or misattributed heading — though it can only source it to The Ring of Truth (2004) by Joseph O’Day, which is a book quoting Carnegie, not a book by him.
  • The column’s subject checks out as the kind of career it describes: Wikipedia ↗ records that de Forest was arrested in March 1912 for use of the mails to defraud and acquitted, fought Edwin Armstrong through years of patent litigation over the regeneration circuit, and made and lost four fortunes.
In copyright

Both documented printings fall well after the 1931 line: the column appeared in a newspaper on 29 January 1942, and the collection that carried it onward, Dale Carnegie’s Scrapbook, was published in 1959 (Simon and Schuster; QI’s copy is the Dale Carnegie & Associates issue), four years after his death. Treat the wording as in copyright and quote it with attribution rather than reprinting it at length; nothing in the record supports calling it public domain.

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

Right author, later book

There is no rival claimant here — nobody else is credited with this sentence, and Quote Investigator ↗ credits Carnegie outright. What travels with the quotation is a bad source. The line comes from a newspaper column, and almost every popular printing either points at the wrong book or drops the citation altogether.

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948) Undocumented source

The Big Book of Business Quotations (2003) prints the line under “Determination” with a citation pointing at Carnegie’s 1948 book. Quote Investigator reproduces that 2003 citation but rests its own conclusion on the 1942 column, and documents no 1948 printing (Quote Investigator ↗).

The Ring of Truth (2004) Second-hand citation

Carnegie’s Wikiquote page ↗ does carry the line, but sources it only “As quoted in The Ring of Truth (2004) by Joseph O’Day” — a modern book quoting Carnegie, six decades downstream of the column he actually wrote it in.

Quote aggregators No source at all

The Goodreads entry ↗ gives the author’s name and nothing else — no book, no date, no page. A perfectly documented quotation can still read as invented once the citation is stripped off it.

The wording is Carnegie’s own, and it has a date: 29 January 1942, in his column “Being Discouraged Never Pays.” Quote Investigator ↗ concludes that Dale Carnegie deserves credit for the statement, which he wrote in that 1942 newspaper column.

Context

The moral of a story about a man who kept losing

Carnegie did not write this as free-floating uplift. It is the closing moral of a column with a case study attached, and the case was Lee de Forest — the inventor of the Audion vacuum tube, the three-electrode valve that made electronic amplification practical. Quote Investigator summarises the column as a catalogue of the technological, financial and legal obstacles de Forest ran into before that success (Quote Investigator ↗).

Those obstacles were real. Wikipedia ↗ records that de Forest and four company officers were arrested in March 1912 for using the mails to defraud — three of the defendants were convicted, de Forest acquitted — that he spent years in patent litigation with Edwin Armstrong over the regeneration circuit, and that he made and lost four fortunes, dying with $1,250 in the bank. That is the biography Carnegie was pointing at when he wrote that the important things get done by people who keep going when there is no hope in sight.

The subject of the column had been prosecuted for fraud, litigated for years, and made and lost four fortunes.

The citation chain, printing by printing

The sequence Quote Investigator ↗ documents: 29 January 1942, the Carnegie column “Being Discouraged Never Pays” in The Marshall News Messenger, page 6, column 5, consulted through Newspapers.com; 1959, page 199 of Dale Carnegie’s Scrapbook: A Treasury of the Wisdom of the Ages, edited by Dorothy Carnegie after his death, verified with scans; 2003, page 119 of The Big Book of Business Quotations, which prints the line under the topic “Determination” with a citation pointing at How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948).

One step further along, Wikiquote ↗ lists the line sourced only to The Ring of Truth (2004) by Joseph O’Day, and the quote aggregators drop the source entirely — the Goodreads entry ↗ carries the author’s name and nothing else. Each link in that chain is a little further from the newspaper page, which is why a genuine quotation ends up looking unsourced.

Explore

Filed under

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

Resilience Hope 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 Investigator: the full investigationquoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative study — the 1942 column citation, the 1959 reprint, and the verdict crediting Carnegie.
Dale Carnegie — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists this line, but sourced only to a 2004 compilation rather than to Carnegie’s own 1942 column.
Dale Carnegie — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Life dates (1888–1955), bibliography, and Dorothy Carnegie’s role running the company after his death.
Lee de Forest — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

The inventor the column was about: the Audion, the 1912 mail-fraud arrest and acquittal, four fortunes made and lost.
Dale Carnegie’s Scrapbook (1959) — catalog recordopenlibrary.org

The 1959 Simon and Schuster edition, described as edited, with a selection of Dale Carnegie’s own writings, by Dorothy Carnegie.
Dale Carnegie’s Scrapbook — scanned copyarchive.org

A borrowable scan of the Simon and Schuster printing of the posthumous collection that carried the line forward.

The author

About Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie

1888–1955 · American writer & public-speaking teacher

Dale Carnegie was born on a Missouri farm in 1888 and turned a public-speaking night class into the century’s most successful self-improvement franchise; How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948) are still in print. Alongside the books he wrote newspaper columns built around a single illustrative life — an inventor, a salesman, a president — ending on a line you could carry around, which is exactly the shape of this sentence. After his death in 1955 his widow, Dorothy Carnegie, ran the company and edited the collections that kept his sayings circulating.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Dale Carnegie, “Being Discouraged Never Pays,” The Marshall News Messenger (Marshall, Texas), 29 January 1942, p. 6, col. 5 — as documented in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Important Things in the World Have Been Accomplished by People Who Have Kept On Trying When There Seemed To Be No Hope At All,” 1 January 2022 (notes updated 18 March 2025). Reprinted in Dale Carnegie’s Scrapbook: A Treasury of the Wisdom of the Ages, ed. Dorothy Carnegie (Garden City, New York: Dale Carnegie & Associates, 1959), 199.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all’?” Last verified 25 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/most-of-the-important-things-in-the-world-have-been/

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