Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies

Not Nelson Mandela — a modern proverb he never wrote Unknown — a modern recovery-era proverb Concise form documented from the mid-1990s; roots in 1980s Christian/self-help writing
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

No speech, book, letter, or interview by Mandela contains this line. Quote Investigator ↗ traces the “resentment / poison” figure to an evolving saying — an early strong match is Bert Ghezzi’s 1980 The Angry Christian, with the crisp modern wording appearing among several writers in the 1990s — and finds no evidence Mandela originated it.

Last verified 10 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies” Contrary to popular belief, Nelson Mandela did not write "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies." It is a modern proverb that evolved through recovery and self-help writing in the 1980s–90s; Quote Investigator finds no Mandela source for it.

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

Can you use it?

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.

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

In context

Evoking the world of Nelson Mandela — South African anti-apartheid leader & president. Theme: "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies". 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 "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies". 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

An evolved proverb, pinned on Mandela later

Attributed to
Nelson Mandela (unsupported)
Actual origin
Anonymous modern proverb; evolved wording
Early documented match
Bert Ghezzi, The Angry Christian (1980)
Concise modern form
Multiple writers, mid-1990s onward

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”

The wording circulates in many variants — “taking poison and waiting for the other person to die,” “…hoping it’ll kill someone else” — long predating its attachment to Mandela.

Quote Investigator: full chronology

How we traced it

  • Quote Investigator ↗ finds the figure evolved over decades and credits no single author, naming Bert Ghezzi’s 1980 The Angry Christian as an early strong match.
  • Word-nerd chronicler Barry Popik ↗ documents 1990s appearances from Susan Cheever and Malachy McCourt, and notes USA Today only folded it into a Mandela list in December 2013.
  • The exact “kill your enemies” Mandela wording is reproduced across quote aggregators like Goodreads ↗, none of which cite a Mandela source.

This is an anonymous modern proverb with no single identifiable first-publication, so no copyright status can be responsibly asserted for the exact wording. Individual later renderings (e.g. Bert Ghezzi’s 1980 phrasing, or Carrie Fisher’s 2003 novel) are in copyright to their own authors, but none is the “drinking poison…kill your enemies” line credited to Mandela.

Fact-check

The misattribution

A clever line about forgiveness, a globally beloved reconciliation figure — the pairing is irresistible and unsourced. Here is what the record actually shows.

Nelson Mandela unsupported

No Mandela speech, autobiography, letter, or interview has ever been shown to contain this line. Quote Investigator ↗ finds no evidence he originated it, and Barry Popik ↗ notes it was only bundled into a Mandela quote list around his December 2013 death.

Carrie Fisher, Malachy McCourt, Alan Brandt & others variants

The concise saying surfaces under several names in the 1990s — Alan Brandt and Susan Cheever (1995), Malachy McCourt in a 1998 New York Times profile — and Carrie Fisher used it in her 2003 novel The Best Awful, per Quote Investigator ↗. None is the single originator.

Bert Ghezzi (1980) early match

Quote Investigator ↗ identifies Bert Ghezzi’s 1980 book The Angry Christian — “Resentment is like a poison we carry around inside us…” — as an early strong match, part of an evolving proverb, not a coining of the exact modern line.

It’s a modern proverb that grew out of recovery and self-help writing across the 1980s–90s — not a Mandela quotation. See Quote Investigator’s full account ↗.

Context

Why the myth sticks

The saying works because its image is exact: harming yourself in the name of harming someone else. That moral clarity is why it gets attached to figures famous for transcending grievance — and no one fits that story better than Nelson Mandela.

But the documented trail runs through recovery literature and 1990s writers, not Robben Island. Mandela embodied the idea; he did not author the sentence.

Living a proverb is not the same as writing it.

The variant wordings

Common forms include “taking poison and waiting for the other person to die” and “hoping it’ll kill someone else.” The “kill your enemies” phrasing is the one most often stamped with Mandela’s name.

Some tellings swap “resentment” for “hatred” or “holding a grudge” — further evidence of an oral, evolving proverb rather than a fixed quotation.

Explore

Filed under

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

Wisdom Character

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: Resentment / poisonquoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative chronology: earliest matches, evolution, and why it isn't Mandela's.
Barry Popik: Resentment is like drinking poisonbarrypopik.com

Etymology researcher's dated citations from the 1990s onward, including the Mandela drift.
Goodreads: the Mandela-credited wordinggoodreads.com

Shows the exact 'kill your enemies' form circulating under Mandela's name with no source.
Forbes: Resentment is like taking poisonforbes.com

Popular-press use of the 'waiting for the other person to die' variant.
Nelson Mandela (Wikipedia)en.wikipedia.org

Background on the statesman the line is popularly, but wrongly, pinned to.

Credited, but not the author

Why it lands on Mandela

Nelson Mandela

1918–2013 · South African anti-apartheid leader & president

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years imprisoned under apartheid and emerged to lead South Africa’s peaceful transition, serving as its first democratically elected president (1994–1999) and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. His public embrace of reconciliation over vengeance made him a natural magnet for uplifting sayings about forgiveness — but living a proverb is not the same as writing it, and this particular line traces to sources that predate his association with it.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented in recovery-era writing; investigated by Quote Investigator

Garson O'Toole (Quote Investigator), “Resentment Is Like Taking Poison and Waiting for the Other Person To Die,” QuoteInvestigator.com, 19 August 2017; with Bert Ghezzi, The Angry Christian (Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1980) cited as an early strong match.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/resentment-is-like-drinking-poison-and-then-hoping-it-will

Copied