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Who really said it

Thank goodness we don't get as much government as we pay for

Not Will Rogers — an anonymous 1940s tax joke Unknown (an anonymous jokesmith) Originator unidentified · earliest match in print, 11 June 1947
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

There is no Will Rogers source for this line. Rogers died in 1935, and the earliest match located by Quote Investigator ↗ is a report in The Fairbury Daily News of Fairbury, Nebraska on 11 June 1947, where a local businessman named Max Denney passed the quip along to a Rotary meeting as “one man’s observation” — explicitly not claiming it. QI concludes that “an anonymous jokesmith should receive credit for this saying,” and that the 1966 credit to Rogers, arriving so long after his death, is “very weak evidence.”

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Thank goodness we don't get as much government as we pay for” not Will Rogers. The earliest match located by Quote Investigator is the Fairbury Daily News (Nebraska), 11 June 1947, where businessman Max Denney quoted it as "one man's observation." Rogers died in 1935 and was not credited with the line until 1966. Via Quotle.info.

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

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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.

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In context

Evoking the themes of power and freedom. Theme: "Thank goodness we don't get as much government as we pay for". 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 "Thank goodness we don't get as much government as we pay for". 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 source

Publication
The Fairbury Daily News, Fairbury, Nebraska
Earliest match located
11 June 1947, page 1, column 8 — “Says Public Interest Answer To Worry Over Tax Burdens”
Speaker
Max Denney, a local businessman, addressing Rotarians — quoting “one man’s observation,” not himself
First credited to Will Rogers
The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, 19 July 1966, page 8, column 1

The only bright spot in the cost of government Denney said, is one man’s observation that “Thank goodness we don’t get as much government as we pay for” 1947

This is the earliest instance located by Quote Investigator ↗, transcribed from The Fairbury Daily News of 11 June 1947 (page 1, column 8) via Newspapers.com. Note the construction: Denney is relaying somebody else’s line, and does not claim it.

Quote Investigator: Thank Goodness We Don't Get As Much Government As We Pay For

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ ran a dedicated survey of this quip and states: “The earliest match located by QI appeared in a Fairbury, Nebraska newspaper in 1947. Local businessman Max Denney addressed a meeting of Rotarians and discussed government spending. He employed the joke but disclaimed credit.” QI’s conclusion is that “the originator of the saying remains anonymous.”
  • The trail then runs through Charles F. Kettering, not Rogers: a Birmingham speech reported in the Alabama Journal on 24 January 1949, in which Kettering presented the line as a dialogue between two anonymous men; direct credit to Kettering in The Minneapolis Star of 8 February 1950 and in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce periodical American Economic Security in March 1950; and a Forbes filler item of 15 September 1962. Details and page numbers are on QI’s page ↗.
  • Will Rogers enters the record only in 1966, in The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi (19 July 1966, page 8): “Will Rogers, the late great humorist, used to say ‘Thank Heaven we don’t get as much government as we pay for’.” QI notes Rogers died in 1935 and treats the gap as “very weak evidence” (source ↗).
  • Two independent checks agree. Wikiquote’s Will Rogers page ↗ lists the variant “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for” only in its “As quoted in …” section, sourced to The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1998) by Connie Robertson — a late compilation, not a Rogers text. And the Will Rogers Memorial Museum’s own “Will’s Quotes” collection ↗, which includes a Politics section, contains no instance of the phrase “pay for” at all.

No public-domain claim is made here, because the sentence has no identified author. The earliest known appearance is a 1947 newspaper report published well after 1931 by an identifiable publisher, and it is quoted above only as a short excerpt documenting the attribution. Will Rogers’s own writings are a separate matter — but this line is not among them.

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

Often misattributed

This quip has been handed to four different famous men, and the two who actually used it in public both said it wasn’t theirs. That is the signature of an anonymous joke acquiring prestige by attachment.

Will Rogers Posthumous, no source

Rogers died in 1935. Quote Investigator ↗ records no instance during his lifetime; the first credit to him is a 19 July 1966 item in The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi — “Will Rogers, the late great humorist, used to say ‘Thank Heaven we don’t get as much government as we pay for’” — and QI holds that “the long delay meant that this was very weak evidence.”

Charles F. Kettering He disclaimed it

The General Motors research chief used the joke in a Birmingham, Alabama speech reported in the Alabama Journal on 24 January 1949, but framed it as a dialogue between two anonymous men. Newspapers began crediting him outright the next year — The Minneapolis Star, 8 February 1950 — and Forbes was still printing it under his name in September 1962, per QI’s citation trail ↗.

Thomas Jefferson Implausible

An 18 April 1963 editorial in the Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia offered it as “Thomas Jefferson’s classic remark: ‘Thank heaven, we don’t get as much government as we pay for!’” Quote Investigator ↗ describes the link to Jefferson as implausible.

Robert A. Heinlein and the quotation books Repeated, not verified

In Expanded Universe (Ace Books; 1980 copyright, cited by QI from the 1982 printing) Heinlein wrote: “Will Rogers told us that we were lucky in that we didn’t get as much government as we pay for. He was (and is) emphatically right.” Random House Webster’s Quotationary then certified the Rogers credit in 2001 by citing the CBS-TV programme Will Rogers U.S.A., 9 March 1972 — a television broadcast, not anything Rogers wrote. Both are documented on QI’s page ↗.

No Rogers column, telegram, radio script or film line containing this sentence has been produced — not by Quote Investigator ↗, not by Wikiquote ↗, and not by the Will Rogers Memorial Museum’s own quote collection ↗. The earliest instance anyone has found is a 1947 Nebraska newspaper report in which the speaker credits an unnamed someone else.

Context

Why this one sticks to Rogers

Rogers spent the Depression writing a daily telegram and a weekly column about what Washington was doing with the public’s money, in a voice everyone recognised. He is therefore a natural magnet for any tidy, folksy line about government waste — the attribution sounds right, which is exactly the condition under which nobody goes looking for a citation.

The paper trail runs the other way. The joke turns up in print in 1947, in a Nebraska Rotary Club report, and the man saying it credits an unnamed someone else. For years afterwards it travels attached to Charles F. Kettering, the General Motors research chief — who also disclaimed it — before being handed to Thomas Jefferson in 1963 and to Rogers in 1966. Robert Heinlein repeated the Rogers version in Expanded Universe, and a Random House quotation dictionary certified it in 2001 by citing a 1972 television programme. Every link in that chain postdates Rogers’s death.

Rogers died in 1935. The joke reaches print in 1947 — quoted by a man who said it wasn’t his.

The variant wordings, and the book that put Rogers next to Kettering

Evan Esar’s 20,000 Quips and Quotes (1968) printed a Rogers line about government spending directly above the “as much government as we pay for” quip credited to Kettering. Quote Investigator notes that this adjacency “sometimes leads to confusion between attributions” — while pointing out that the Rogers credit was already circulating by 1966, before the book appeared.

The wording is unusually unstable, which is itself a marker of anonymous origin: “Thank goodness we don’t get as much government as we pay for” (1947), “Better be thankful you don’t get as much government as you pay for” (1949), “we don’t get anywhere near as much government as we pay for” (1953), and the form most often seen today, “Thank heavens we don’t get all the government we pay for.” Quote Investigator opens its article by calling the quip “difficult to trace because its phrasing is highly variable.”

Explore

Filed under

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

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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: Thank Goodness We Don't Get As Much Government As We Pay Forquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive citation trail, 1947–2001: the Fairbury 1947 first match, Kettering's 1949 disclaimer, the 1963 Jefferson credit, the 1966 Rogers credit, Heinlein, and QI's anonymous-origin conclusion.
Wikiquote: Will Rogersen.wikiquote.org

Carries the variant "Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for" only under "As quoted in …", sourced to The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1998) — no Rogers text is cited.
Will's Quotes — Will Rogers Memorial Museumwww.willrogers.com

The museum's own curated collection of Rogers quotations, organised by topic including Politics; a full-text check returns no instance of the phrase "pay for".
Wikipedia: Will Rogersen.wikipedia.org

Life dates (4 November 1879 – 15 August 1935), the Cherokee Nation birth, the 4,000-plus syndicated columns, and the Alaska crash with Wiley Post.
Wikipedia: Charles F. Ketteringen.wikipedia.org

Background on the inventor who carried the quip through the 1950s: head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947, founder of Delco, holder of 186 patents.

The name it gets pinned on

About Will Rogers

Will Rogers

1879–1935 · American humorist, newspaper columnist and film star

Will Rogers was born a citizen of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory in 1879 and became, by the 1930s, one of the most widely read commentators in America — a vaudeville rope-twirler turned film star who wrote more than 4,000 syndicated newspaper columns and needled Congress for a living. He died in an airplane crash in Alaska with the aviator Wiley Post in August 1935. That enormous, plain-spoken output on taxes and government is exactly why anonymous political quips keep drifting onto his name — but this one surfaces in print only after his death, and the Will Rogers Memorial Museum’s own quote collection does not carry it.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented instance (Chicago)

“Says Public Interest Answer To Worry Over Tax Burdens.” The Fairbury Daily News (Fairbury, NE), June 11, 1947, 1, col. 8 — the earliest match located by Quote Investigator, in which Max Denney quotes the line as another man’s observation. See Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Thank Goodness We Don’t Get As Much Government As We Pay For,” October 29, 2021.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Thank goodness we don't get as much government as we pay for’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/thank-goodness-we-dont-get-as-much-government-as-we-pay-for/

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