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Who really said it

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago

Attributed to Warren Buffett b. 30 August 1930 · American investor; chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
Attributed In copyright

Buffett is credited with this exact sentence — word for word, contraction and all — in Andrew Kilpatrick’s 1992 biography Warren Buffett: The Good Guy of Wall Street, which prints it on page 288 and credits it to NewsInc., January 1991. That is a close, dated citation rather than a primary one: no transcript, letter or shareholder letter in Buffett’s own hand has been located for it, and the underlying thought was a common proverb in print long before he was born.

Last verified 4 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago” Warren Buffett (attributed) — "Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." Credited to Buffett in Andrew Kilpatrick, Warren Buffett: The Good Guy of Wall Street (Donald I. Fine, 1992), p. 288, sourced to NewsInc., January 1991. The underlying proverb is much older: an 1868 Pall Mall Gazette item calls a compact version an "Indian proverb," and Cicero quotes Caecilius Statius on planting trees for another age. Verified at quotle.info.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Warren E. Buffett (the words); Andrew Kilpatrick and Donald I. Fine, Inc. (the 1992 biography in which they are documented)). 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 Warren Buffett — American investor · chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Theme: "Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago". 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.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago". 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

Where the line is actually printed

Quoted in
Warren Buffett: The Good Guy of Wall Street
Author & imprint
Andrew Kilpatrick; Donald I. Fine, New York, 1992 — chapter “A Few Last Words from Warren Buffett,” page 288
Credited to
NewsInc., January 1991
Ancient antecedent
Cicero, Cato Maior de Senectute §24, quoting Caecilius Statius

Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. —NewsInc. January 1991. 1992 biography, quoting a January 1991 statement

As reproduced by Quote Investigator from page 288 of the 1992 Kilpatrick biography, whose quotation chapter carries the credit line beneath the sentence. The circulating internet wording matches this printing exactly.

Quote Investigator: Blessed Are Those Who Plant Trees Under Whose Shade They Will Never Sit

How we verified this

  • Antiquity — Cicero has Cato quote the poet Caecilius Statius: “Serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint”, he plants trees which will be of use to another age (de Senectute §24, Latin text ↗).
  • 1868 — the Pall Mall Gazette prints a compact version labelled an “Indian proverb”: blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • 1955 — Walter Lippmann, in Essays in The Public Philosophy, quotes the saying in passing as something already proverbial: old men plant trees they will never sit under (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • 1991–1992 — Andrew Kilpatrick’s biography prints Buffett’s inverted version on page 288 and credits NewsInc., January 1991; Wikiquote cites the same January 1991 statement (Wikiquote ↗).
In copyright

This is a modern sentence from a living author: first documented in print in Kilpatrick’s 1992 biography and credited to a January 1991 statement, so it sits well inside US copyright — the 1931 public-domain cutoff is nowhere near it. The older proverb it reworks is free (Cicero’s Latin and the 1868 newspaper wording are long out of copyright), but Buffett’s particular phrasing is not; quote it with attribution rather than treating it as 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

What Buffett did and didn’t invent

This is not a fake Buffett quote. The wording is his, and it is documented within about a year of his saying it. What gets misattributed is the idea: the internet routinely presents this as a Buffett original, and its close relatives get pinned on ancient Greeks who never said them.

Cicero, quoting the poet Caecilius Statius ancient antecedent

Cato Maior de Senectute §24 reads “Serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint, ut ait Statius noster in Synephebis” — he plants trees which will be of use to another age (Latin text ↗).

“An Indian proverb” 1868

Quote Investigator records the Pall Mall Gazette printing “Indian proverb, ‘Blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit’” — in circulation decades before Buffett was born (Quote Investigator ↗).

“A society grows great when old men plant trees…” — called an ancient Greek proverb unsupported

Roger Pearse went looking for the Greek original and found none, concluding the real origin is most likely D. Elton Trueblood’s 1951 book The Life We Prize (Roger Pearse ↗).

Buffett’s sentence is real and datable — a 1992 biography prints it verbatim and credits a January 1991 statement — but he was restating a proverb that was already in English newspapers in the 1860s and in Latin two millennia before that (Quote Investigator ↗).

Context

Why a fund manager was quoting a tree proverb

Buffett’s whole public argument is that returns belong to people who wait. So a proverb about planting for a harvest you may never sit under is not decoration in his mouth — it is the thesis, compressed to one sentence a reader remembers after the annual report is closed.

What makes the line travel is the pronoun. Older versions of the proverb are addressed to the planter (“blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit”). Buffett flipped the point of view to the person in the shade — the beneficiary, not the benefactor — which turns a lesson about generosity into a lesson about inheritance and compounding.

The old proverb praises the planter. Buffett’s version addresses the person already sitting in the shade.

How old is the underlying proverb?

Older than English. Cicero, in Cato Maior de Senectute §24, quotes the Roman poet Caecilius Statius: “serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint” — he plants trees which will be of use to another age.

Quote Investigator’s survey of the saying runs through Thomas Fuller’s Gnomologia (1732), nineteenth-century newspapers, an 1866 sermon by the French theologian Hyacinthe Loyson, an 1868 Pall Mall Gazette item that labelled a compact version an “Indian proverb,” and mid-century instances from Elton Trueblood (1951) and Walter Lippmann (1955), before reaching Buffett in 1992.

Explore

Filed under

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

Gratitude Time Work

Go further

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Blessed Are Those Who Plant Trees Under Whose Shade They Will Never Sitquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Traces the adage from Cicero through 1732, 1866 and 1868 to Lippmann and Buffett, and prints the 1992 Kilpatrick citation for Buffett’s wording (verified with scans).
Warren Buffetten.wikiquote.org

Lists the line in its main Quotes section sourced to a “Statement of January 1991, as quoted in Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett (2007) by Andrew Kilpatrick.”
Cicero, Cato Maior de Senectute (Latin text)thelatinlibrary.com

Section 24 carries the ancient ancestor: “Serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint, ut ait Statius noster in Synephebis.”
Warren Buffett: the good guy of Wall Street (borrowable scan)archive.org

Internet Archive’s digitised copy of Kilpatrick’s Buffett biography (Primus / Donald I. Fine); the scanned copy is catalogued as the 1995 printing of the book first published in 1992.
“An ancient Greek proverb”? — Roger Pearseroger-pearse.com

Tracks the sibling line “a society grows great when old men plant trees…”, finds no Greek source, and points instead to D. Elton Trueblood’s 1951 book The Life We Prize.
Warren Buffetten.wikipedia.org

Biography: born 30 August 1930 in Omaha; chairman of Berkshire Hathaway; stepped down as CEO effective 1 January 2026, succeeded by Greg Abel.

The Oracle of Omaha

Who was doing the talking

Warren Buffett

Born 1930 · American investor · chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

Warren Edward Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska on 30 August 1930, learned value investing under Benjamin Graham at Graham-Newman, and founded Buffett Partnership Ltd. in 1956 before turning the failing textile maker Berkshire Hathaway into one of America’s largest conglomerates. He stepped down as Berkshire’s chief executive effective 1 January 2026, handing the job to Greg Abel while remaining chairman. His public voice is deliberately folksy — homely images, borrowed proverbs, plain arithmetic — which is exactly why sayings he repeated so often end up filed under his name as sayings he coined.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this page

Andrew Kilpatrick, Warren Buffett: The Good Guy of Wall Street (New York: Donald I. Fine, 1992), 288, crediting NewsInc., January 1991 — the earliest Buffett citation given in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Blessed Are Those Who Plant Trees Under Whose Shade They Will Never Sit,” 29 April 2020, updated 20 October 2024.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/someones-sitting-in-the-shade-today-because-someone-planted/

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