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Who really said it

The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will'

Not Charles Dickens — an unsourced modern slogan Unknown No documented author, date or first publication
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

The sentence appears nowhere in Dickens. A full-text search of 40 of his works — all fifteen novels including David Copperfield, the Christmas books, the sketches and travel writing, the collected speeches and three volumes of published letters — returns no hit for any phrase in it. Quote databases print the identical wording under David Copperfield the illusionist as readily as under Dickens, and neither camp cites a book, an interview or a date.

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

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will'” NOT Charles Dickens. The sentence appears in none of Dickens's published works, including David Copperfield, the only book ever named for it. Quote databases credit the identical wording to both Charles Dickens and David Copperfield the illusionist, and neither attribution cites a book, interview or date. Origin undocumented. Traced by Quotle.info, 17 Aug 2026. · Verbatim: “The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will.' Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Charles Dickens. 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 themes of purpose, courage and growth. Theme: "The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will'". 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 "The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will'". 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 that isn’t there

Popular attribution
Charles Dickens — no work named
Only work ever named
David Copperfield
Full-text result
Absent from 40 Dickens titles: all 15 novels, the Christmas books, the sketches and travel writing, the speeches and the collected letters
Rival attribution
David Copperfield, the American illusionist (b. 16 September 1956) — also uncited

The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.’ Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities. No source located

This is the full circulating form; the second sentence is usually dropped when the line is posted. It is not an extract from anything — no edition, chapter or page has ever been produced for it, by anyone, for either claimant.

Project Gutenberg: the full text of David Copperfield

How we checked

  • The only work ever named is David Copperfield, and the phrase is not in it. Checked against the Project Gutenberg text of the novel ↗, published 1849–1850, and against thirty-nine further Dickens titles: no hit for “stop saying,” “start saying,” “most important thing in life,” “consider nothing,” “nothing impossible” or “possibilities as probabilities.”
  • Wikiquote’s Charles Dickens page ↗ does not carry the line at all — not among the sourced quotations, and not in its Misattributed section, which lists a single entry (the “every one for himself” elephant line, credited to Charles Reade).
  • Where it does appear, nothing is cited. Goodreads files the full two sentences under Charles Dickens ↗ with no book named, beneath its own notice that quotes are added by the community and not verified.
  • The same two sentences sit on QuoteFancy under the name David Copperfield ↗, word for word and equally sourceless. That split — one text, two famous names, zero citations — is the clearest available signal of how a Victorian novelist ended up credited with a motivational slogan.

No rights status can be asserted. Dickens’s own writing is long out of copyright, but that is irrelevant here because the sentence is not his: it has no identifiable author, no first publication and no date, and the competing attribution is to a performer who is still living. Treat the wording as of unknown provenance rather than 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

Where the credit goes, and why it’s wrong

This is one of the most-shared “Dickens” lines on the internet and one of the easiest to disprove: the only book ever named for it is David Copperfield, and the words are not in David Copperfield.

Charles Dickens Not in any of his works

Searched across forty Dickens titles on Project Gutenberg, including the complete text of David Copperfield ↗, with no match for any phrase in it. Wikiquote’s Dickens page ↗ does not carry it either, in any section. Goodreads prints it under his name ↗ with no book cited and a standing notice that its quotes are user-submitted and unverified.

Dickens’s 1850 novel Name collision

The novel is named because the quote is filed under “David Copperfield” — not the other way round. QuoteFancy carries the identical two sentences under the bare name David Copperfield ↗ and the same text again under Charles Dickens ↗. A bare personal name that is also a book title is all it takes.

David Copperfield, the American illusionist Also unsourced

AZQuotes files “Stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will’” under a David Copperfield described as a magician born 16 September 1956 ↗, and its quote page gives no citation at all ↗. This is the likelier of the two labels, since a working motivational line fits a living performer better than a Victorian novelist — but likelier is not sourced, and it should not be reported as fact.

Nobody has produced a source for this sentence — not a chapter of Dickens, not an interview with the magician. Until one surfaces, the honest description is an unattributed modern slogan that acquired a Victorian author by way of a borrowed stage name ↗.

Context

Two famous men, one name, no page number

Most fake-Dickens lines are hard to trace because the fake has no rival claimant. This one is unusually legible, because the rival claimant is right there in the filing system: the identical two sentences circulate under Charles Dickens and under David Copperfield — and David Copperfield is the title of a Dickens novel.

The living David Copperfield was born David Seth Kotkin, and Wikipedia records that he took the stage name from the Dickens novel because he liked its sound ↗. That single borrowing is enough to break a quote database. A scraper that finds “David Copperfield” with no other detail attached has two famous men to choose between, and the Victorian one carries more quotable weight. What neither attribution has ever produced is a chapter, a broadcast, or a date.

Dickens did write a great line about willpower in David Copperfield. It is the first sentence of the book, and it is not this one.

How the check was run

Sixty-eight plain-text files were pulled from Project Gutenberg, covering forty distinct Dickens titles: The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood; the five Christmas books; the sketches, Christmas stories and travel writing; Speeches: Literary and Social; and The Letters of Charles Dickens in three volumes.

Whitespace was normalised first so that a phrase broken across a line or page would still match, and each key phrase was searched case-insensitively as a regular expression rather than a literal string. Nothing matched. The novel David Copperfield uses the word “probability” freely and “probabilities” never in this construction — the search mechanism works; the phrase simply is not there.

Explore

Filed under

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

Purpose Courage Growth

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.

David Copperfield — full textgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg’s complete text of the 1849–50 novel, the only Dickens work ever named as the source. Search it yourself: the phrase is not in it.
Charles Dickensen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s sourced Dickens collection. The line does not appear in it — not among the sourced quotations and not in the Misattributed section, which lists only one entry.
The quote, filed under Dickensgoodreads.com

Where a great many people meet the line. No work is named, and the page carries Goodreads’ own notice that its quotes are user-added and unverified.
The same words, filed under the magicianquotefancy.com

QuoteFancy’s copy of the identical two sentences under the name David Copperfield, equally sourceless. Compare its Dickens copy of the same text.
David Copperfield (illusionist)en.wikipedia.org

Born David Seth Kotkin, 16 September 1956; he adopted the stage name from the Dickens novel — the collision that makes this misattribution possible.
Fact-checking the fake Dickens quotesluc.edu

Loyola University Chicago on Lydia Craig’s research into quotes falsely credited to Dickens, and how film scripts and self-help books end up wearing his name.

Who it’s pinned on

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

1812–1870 · English novelist and journalist

Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and journalist, and the most widely read novelist of the Victorian age. He was a genuine aphorist — Micawber’s budget arithmetic and the opening of David Copperfield are his — which is exactly why unsourced uplift keeps getting hung on his name. This particular line is not among the things he wrote.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Unattributed

No documented source. The wording appears in none of Dickens’s published works, checked against Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (serialised May 1849 – November 1850; book form 1850), Project Gutenberg edition, and 39 further Dickens titles. The quote databases that credit either Charles Dickens or David Copperfield the illusionist cite no book, interview or date.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will'’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-most-important-thing-in-life-is-to-stop-saying-i-wish/

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