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Who really said it

There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self

Not Seneca — actually W. L. Sheldon Walter L. Sheldon 1858–1907 · American Ethical Culture lecturer, founder of the Ethical Society of St. Louis
Disputed Free to reuse

This exact wording was written by Walter L. Sheldon in his 1897 essay “What to Believe: An Ethical Creed,” published in Ethical Addresses. Per Quote Investigator, the credit to Seneca first surfaced only in a 1973 quotation anthology with no Roman source, and the line appears nowhere in Seneca’s works. It is also widely — and wrongly — pinned on Ernest Hemingway.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self” There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self. —Walter L. Sheldon, "Ethical Addresses," 1897 (commonly misattributed to Seneca)

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

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In context

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Provenance

The documented source

Author
Walter L. Sheldon (1858–1907)
Work
“What to Believe: An Ethical Creed,” in Ethical Addresses, Series 4, No. 4
First published
April 1897 (reprinted in The Unitarian, June 1897)
Popularly credited to
Seneca (unsupported, first seen 1973)

There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.

The wording as printed in Sheldon’s 1897 essay — identical to the line now circulated under Seneca’s name, apart from later swaps of “previous self” for “former self.”

Quote Investigator: full origin analysis

How we traced it

  • The earliest strong match is W. L. Sheldon’s essay “What to Believe: An Ethical Creed” in Ethical Addresses (April 1897), reprinted in The Unitarian that June, per Quote Investigator.
  • The Seneca credit did not appear until 1973, when Herbert V. Prochnow’s A Speaker’s Treasury for Educators assigned it to “Seneca” with no distinction between Elder and Younger and no Roman source, as QI documents.
  • The rival Hemingway attribution stems from a January 1963 Playboy piece, “A Man’s Credo”; scholar Peter L. Hays argues Hemingway did not write it, and the saying predates his birth — see Quote Investigator.
Public domain

The exact wording was first published in 1897 by Walter L. Sheldon — well before the 1931 U.S. copyright cutoff — so the text is in the public domain. (The Seneca attribution is spurious; no ancient-translation copyright is at issue.)

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 is wrongly credited to

This self-improvement aphorism is a serial magnet for famous names. The wording is genuinely old — it is just not by any of the luminaries it gets pinned on.

Seneca unsupported

The credit to the Roman Stoic surfaced only in 1973, in Herbert V. Prochnow’s A Speaker’s Treasury for Educators, with no citation and no distinction between Seneca the Elder and the Younger. The line is absent from Seneca’s letters and essays, and it postdates them by roughly 1,800 years — see Quote Investigator.

Ernest Hemingway disputed

Widely quoted (often as “fellow man… former self”) from a January 1963 Playboy article, “A Man’s Credo.” Hemingway scholar Peter L. Hays argues the piece is not authentically Hemingway’s, and the saying was already in print before Hemingway was born, per QI.

a “Hindu proverb” folk credit

In March 1898 The Clinical Reporter reprinted the line (swapping “former self” for “previous self”) and labeled it a “Hindu Proverb”; QI found no Hindu-literature precursor for it.

The earliest documented source is W. L. Sheldon’s 1897 ethical creed — not Seneca, not Hemingway — as established by Quote Investigator.

Context

Why it resonates

The thought — that virtue lies in bettering yourself rather than beating others — is a natural fit for Stoicism, which is exactly why the Seneca label stuck so easily. But its documented origin is the American Ethical Culture movement of the 1890s, a rationalist effort to teach ethics detached from doctrine. Sheldon framed it as part of a practical “creed” for living.

The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.

Explore

Filed under

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

Growth Humility 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: origin analysisquoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative tracing to W. L. Sheldon (1897), with the Seneca and Hemingway misattributions dated and debunked.
Ethical Society of St. Louisen.wikipedia.org

Background on the society Sheldon founded in 1886 and led as its first lecturer.
Walter Lorenzo Sheldon (1858–1907)onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu

Bibliographic record of Sheldon's published ethical writings, confirming his life dates.
Hemingway misattribution (Goodreads)goodreads.com

Example of the popular but erroneous Hemingway credit, in the 'fellow man / former self' variant.

The author

About Walter L. Sheldon

Walter L. Sheldon

1858–1907 · American Ethical Culture lecturer & founder of the Ethical Society of St. Louis

Walter Lorenzo Sheldon (1858–1907) was a Princeton-trained philosopher who studied under Felix Adler and, in 1886, founded the Ethical Society of St. Louis, leading it until his death. His weekly ethical addresses were collected in pamphlet series such as Ethical Addresses. It was in one of these — an 1897 essay on an “ethical creed” — that this aphorism about self-improvement first appeared in its now-familiar form.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented source

Walter L. Sheldon, “What to Believe: An Ethical Creed,” Ethical Addresses, Series 4, No. 4 (Philadelphia: S. Burns Weston, April 1897), 57–61; reprinted in The Unitarian 12, no. 6 (June 1897): 269–270.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/there-is-nothing-noble-in-being-superior-to-some-other-man/

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