The oldest documented form is not Eban’s. It sits on page 35 of Private Diaries of the Rt. Hon. Sir Algernon West, G.C.B. (E. P. Dutton, 1922), where West recalls that “Bernard Shaw, in later years, described him as a man who never missed an occasion of losing an opportunity” — “him” being Lord Rosebery. Abba Eban used his own versions of the joke from October 1970 onward and made it a diplomatic catchphrase, but he did not coin it; equally, Quote Investigator ↗ has found no Shaw writing or transcribed speech that contains it, so the 1922 credit is itself hearsay.
“Some People Never Miss an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity” commonly credited to Abba Eban, but the oldest documented form is in Sir Algernon West's Private Diaries (E. P. Dutton, 1922, p. 35), where Bernard Shaw is said to have described Lord Rosebery as "a man who never missed an occasion of losing an opportunity." Eban used his own versions of the joke from October 1970 onward. Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “Bernard Shaw, in later years, described him as a man who never missed an occasion of losing an opportunity.”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Abba Eban. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
✓ Free to use — but only the 1922 wording quoted here, which is public domain and needs no permission or licence, in commercial and paid presentations included. The tidy modern form (“some people never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”) has no identified author and no known first publication, so no rights claim can honestly be made about it in either direction.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of George Bernard Shaw — Irish-born playwright, critic and Fabian polemicist · Nobel Prize in Literature, 1925. Theme: "Some People Never Miss an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity". 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 "Some People Never Miss an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity". 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 version
Work
Private Diaries of the Rt. Hon. Sir Algernon West, G.C.B.
Edited by
Horace G. Hutchinson
Published
E. P. Dutton, New York, 1922 — page 35
Attribution
West’s recollection of a remark by Bernard Shaw about Lord Rosebery; no date or occasion given
He was a man well described by my friend Lord Welby as one who was always craving for sympathy and never knew how to get it. Bernard Shaw, in later years, described him as a man who never missed an occasion of losing an opportunity, and W. Johnson, afterwards Cory the Eton master, said in a classical allusion that he wanted the palm without the dust.
Recorded 1922
“He” is Lord Rosebery; the passage comes from West’s account of a stay at Dalmeny during the 1892 general election. Note that the wording is never missed an occasion of losing an opportunity — the neat modern form is a later polish, not what the 1922 page says.
1922 — The jibe first appears in print in Sir Algernon West’s posthumously published diaries ↗, credited to Bernard Shaw and aimed at Lord Rosebery. The New York Times singled it out when it reviewed the book that October.
1959–1963 — The remark keeps its Rosebery target but loses its exact shape: History Today reprints the 1922 wording in 1959, while Robert Rhodes James’s 1963 biography and The Spectator that March both give it as “never missed a chance of missing an opportunity,” per Quote Investigator ↗.
1970–1972 — Abba Eban makes it his own. At the National Press Club in October 1970 he says “some politicians never lose a chance of missing an opportunity”; he turns it on the United Nations in December 1971; and Robert St. John’s 1972 biography Eban records “there are political leaders who never lose a chance to miss an opportunity” — all documented by Quote Investigator ↗.
1988 onward — The New York Times reports a PLO version as a paraphrase of Eban’s “famous quip,” and the line detaches from everyone. Wikiquote ↗ carries the “Arabs” form on a single 2002 newspaper citation and notes it is often misquoted with “Palestinians.”
✓Public domain
The excerpt shown is from Private Diaries of the Rt. Hon. Sir Algernon West, G.C.B., published by E. P. Dutton in New York in 1922 — comfortably before 1931, so it is in the public domain in the United States and the full volume is free to read at the Internet Archive. That status covers the 1922 wording only: the tidy modern form of the saying has no identified author or first publication, so no rights claim can honestly be made about it.
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
Who it gets pinned on, and why
This is one of the most confidently misattributed one-liners in political speech — and unusually, every name on it is shaky, including the earliest one.
~
The creditAbba Eban Popularizer, not author
Eban is the reason anyone knows the joke, but he was born in 1915 and his earliest documented use is a National Press Club speech in October 1970 — where he said “some politicians never lose a chance of missing an opportunity.” The jibe was already in print in 1922. Quote Investigator ↗ calls him “a locus for the remark’s popularization,” not its source.
~
The famous wording“The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” Sourced very late
Wikiquote ↗ carries this form with a single citation — a Jerusalem Post item dated 18 November 2002, the day after Eban died — and ties it to the Geneva peace conference of 21 December 1973. That is a retrospective note thirty years after the alleged occasion, and three years after Eban’s first documented use of the joke.
✕
The swapped subject“The Palestinians never miss an opportunity…” A misquote of a misattribution
Wikiquote records that the “Arabs” version is “often misquoted” with “Palestinians” substituted. Quote Investigator notes that when The New York Times used a PLO version in December 1988 it presented it explicitly as a paraphrase of Eban’s quip, not as his words.
~
The 1922 credit itselfGeorge Bernard Shaw Second-hand
Shaw is named by Sir Algernon West, who gives no date and no occasion for the remark and died in 1921, the year before his diaries were published. Quote Investigator states plainly that it “has not yet located any direct evidence in his writings or transcribed speeches.”
✓The honest answer: the oldest documented form of the joke is the 1922 line about Lord Rosebery in Sir Algernon West’s diaries ↗, credited there to Shaw on hearsay. Everything after that — including Eban’s famous version — is a retelling.
Context
Why the line stuck to two very different men
Lord Rosebery was the great political disappointment of late-Victorian Britain: brilliant, rich, hesitant, and visibly unhappy in office. He was Foreign Secretary from 1892 to 1894 and Prime Minister for barely fifteen months, from March 1894 to June 1895, and the men around him kept reaching for the same idea in different words. In the very passage that carries the Shaw jibe, Sir Algernon West stacks three of them: Lord Welby’s man “always craving for sympathy and never knew how to get it,” Shaw’s man who never missed an occasion of losing an opportunity, and Cory’s classical dig that he “wanted the palm without the dust.”
Half a century later the same shape of joke found a much larger stage. Abba Eban was Israel’s foreign minister from 1966 to 1974 and, by common consent, the most fluent English speaker in world diplomacy — a man who wrote his own epigrams and reused the good ones. Quote Investigator documents him deploying the line at the National Press Club in October 1970 (“Some politicians never lose a chance of missing an opportunity”), against the United Nations in December 1971, and again in Robert St. John’s 1972 biography. Once a phrase is that useful, the crowd stops caring who said it first.
Rosebery was the original target; Eban was the megaphone.
How the wording drifted
The documented chain runs: never missed an occasion of losing an opportunity (1922, and repeated verbatim by History Today in 1959) → never missed a chance of missing an opportunity (Robert Rhodes James’s 1963 Rosebery biography, and The Spectator in March 1963) → never lose a chance of missing an opportunity (Eban, 1970) → never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity (The New York Times, December 1988, explicitly describing it as a paraphrase of Eban).
No single speaker is on record for the tidy modern form — “some people never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” It is what the joke settled into after sixty-odd years of retelling, which is why it can be quoted confidently and sourced to nobody.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1856–1950 · Irish-born playwright, critic and Fabian polemicist · Nobel Prize in Literature, 1925
George Bernard Shaw was the most quotable British public figure of his generation — a playwright, music and drama critic, and Fabian socialist agitator whose stage epigrams and platform one-liners were reprinted, paraphrased and improved upon for half a century. He is the earliest name attached to this jibe, in the 1922 diaries of the Liberal civil servant Sir Algernon West, who recalled Shaw using it about Lord Rosebery. That credit is second-hand: West gives no date and no occasion, and no Shaw text has ever been produced to confirm it — which is exactly the loose, unverifiable way most of the sayings pinned to Shaw came to be pinned to him.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
West, Algernon. Private Diaries of the Rt. Hon. Sir Algernon West, G.C.B. Edited by Horace G. Hutchinson. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1922, 35. Earliest documented form, credited there to Bernard Shaw: “never missed an occasion of losing an opportunity.”
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Some People Never Miss an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/some-people-never-miss-an-opportunity-to-miss-an-opportunity/