Quote Investigator ↗ traced the adage to a one-line filler credited only to an unnamed “Ad Boy,” as collected by the column’s signature “PF Pete,” run in the humor column of two Illinois community newspapers on 26 March 1961. John Wooden did print the saying — as the epigraph to chapter 10 of They Call Me Coach (Bantam, 1973) — but he gave it no ascription and never claimed to have coined it. QI’s conclusion: the aphorism “has an anonymous origin,” and Wooden (like Art Linkletter after him) only popularized it.
“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out” Anonymous. In print as unascribed newspaper filler in two Illinois papers on 26 March 1961. John Wooden used a variant ("those," not "the people") as an unattributed chapter epigraph in "They Call Me Coach" (Bantam, 1973) and has been credited as its author ever since; Quote Investigator (8 Oct 2014) concludes the origin is anonymous and that Wooden did not coin it. Via Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to John Wooden. 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.
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In context
Evoking the themes of resilience, hope and happiness. Theme: "Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out". 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 "Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out". 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 appearance
Earliest documented instance
“The Outlet” column, The Park Forest Star and Homewood-Flossmoor Star, Illinois — 26 March 1961, p. 6, col. 8
Credited to
An unnamed “Ad Boy,” as collected by the column’s signature “PF Pete”
Wooden’s use
They Call Me Coach, as told to Jack Tobin (Bantam Books, New York, 1973), p. 71 — epigraph of chapter 10, printed with no ascription
Origin
Anonymous. Wooden neither claimed coinage nor credited anyone else.
Ad Boy: Things turn out for the best for those who make the best out of the way things turn out. PF Pete
Unascribed newspaper filler, 1961
The 1961 filler as transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗, run the same day in two Illinois community papers. Note that this earliest form reads “turn out for the best for those” — the polished “the people” version came later.
26 March 1961 — the earliest instance anyone has located: an unascribed one-liner in the humor columns of two Illinois community newspapers, credited only to an unnamed “Ad Boy,” per Quote Investigator ↗. Over the next decade it recurs in a Texas bank advertisement, a Boys’ Life reader submission and a West Virginia supermarket ad — never with a real, named author, only “Uncle Joe,” a Scoutmaster, or nobody at all.
1973 — John Wooden opens chapter 10 of They Call Me Coach ↗ with the saying, in the “those” form and with no ascription. QI cites the Bantam edition, p. 71, and notes the front matter records a Word Books edition published December 1972.
1977–1979 — newspapers begin printing it flatly as “John Wooden,” and Art Linkletter’s Yes, You Can quotes the “the people” wording while crediting Wooden — the step that fixed the modern form and the modern byline together, per QI ↗.
No rights status can be asserted for the aphorism itself: its author is unknown and its earliest documented appearance is an unascribed 1961 newspaper filler, so there is no identifiable creator or estate to hold a claim — and nothing here supports treating it as public domain. The books that carry it remain in copyright as whole works: John Wooden and Jack Tobin’s They Call Me Coach (1972–73) and Art Linkletter’s Yes, You Can (1979). Separately, the name “John R. Wooden” is handled as licensed property by John Wooden Legacy LLC ↗.
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.
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Fact-check
Who gets the credit, and why it’s wrong
Three names ride this one sentence, and none of them can be shown to have written it. The saying was public property in American newspapers for years before any of them touched it.
✕
as the authorJohn Wooden popularizer, not originator
Wooden did print it — as the unattributed epigraph to chapter 10 of They Call Me Coach (Bantam, 1973), a citation Quote Investigator says it verified with scans ↗. But QI records that “Wooden did not claim coinage, nor did he provide an ascription,” and documents the saying in print from March 1961 onward. Even the licensed John Wooden legacy site ↗ prints it under his name with no source.
✕
the ancient-Rome versionTitus Livius (Livy) no support whatsoever
A 2010 Goodreads page ↗ assigned the line to the Roman historian, still with no book or passage cited. Quote Investigator ↗: “QI has found no substantive support for crediting the dictum to Titus Livius; that linkage appeared relatively recently.” A modern English antimetabole is not a translation of anything.
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sometimes named as the sourceArt Linkletter a repeater who cited his source
Linkletter used the adage in his 1979 book Yes, You Can: How to Succeed in Business and Life — and did the honest thing, explicitly attributing it to Wooden, per Quote Investigator ↗. He repeated it often enough afterward that some collections now credit him instead.
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“the people” vs “those”The wording itself not what Wooden printed
The form that circulates today — “…for the people who…” — is not the wording in Wooden’s book, which reads “Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out.” QI ↗ records the “the people” form in Linkletter’s 1979 quotation of Wooden, and by 2006 a further drift (“Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out”) was also circulating under Wooden’s name.
✓The honest answer: nobody knows who wrote it. The earliest instance anyone has found is an unascribed 1961 newspaper filler credited only to an unnamed “Ad Boy,” as collected by the column’s signature “PF Pete” — and Quote Investigator’s verdict ↗ is that “this aphorism has an anonymous origin. Both John Wooden and Art Linkletter helped to popularize the saying, but neither created it.”
Context
Why this one stuck to Wooden
The line is built on antimetabole — the same handful of words (things, turn, out, best) reshuffled across the two halves of the sentence. That structure makes it feel engineered rather than stumbled upon, which is precisely why readers assume a named author must be behind it. In fact it behaved for years like what it was: unascribed newspaper filler, dropped into humor columns, a Texas bank advertisement, a Boys’ Life reader submission and a West Virginia supermarket ad, always without a real, named author — variously “Uncle Joe,” a Scoutmaster, or nobody at all.
What changed was a famous mouth. When Wooden used it as a chapter epigraph in his 1973 memoir, a sports editor reprinting quotations from that book presented the saying as Wooden’s within months, and by 1977 a Florida newspaper was printing it under his name outright. Art Linkletter then repeated it in his 1979 book Yes, You Can while carefully crediting Wooden — carrying the credit further, and picking up a share of it himself along the way.
It was anonymous filler for twelve years. Then a famous coach printed it without a byline, and the byline filled itself in.
How the credit migrated, step by step
1961–1970: the saying appears repeatedly in American newspapers with no author — ascribed variously to “Ad Boy,” “Uncle Joe,” a Scoutmaster, or nobody at all, per Quote Investigator’s citation list ↗.
1973: Wooden runs it as the chapter 10 epigraph of They Call Me Coach, unattributed. QI notes it verified this citation with scans.
1973–1977: a Georgia sports editor reprints it among quotations from the book; a Florida paper prints it flatly as “John Wooden.”
1979 onward: Linkletter quotes it while crediting Wooden; a 2010 Goodreads page hands it to the Roman historian Titus Livius instead, an attribution QI found no substantive support for.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1910–2010 · UCLA basketball coach & former English teacher
John Robert Wooden (14 October 1910 – 4 June 2010) coached UCLA men’s basketball from 1948 to 1975, winning ten NCAA championships including seven in a row from 1967 to 1973, and was the first person enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. Before Westwood he taught English at South Bend Central High School, and he built his coaching around aphorisms — his Pyramid of Success, his father’s maxims, and a working stock of borrowed proverbs he quoted freely without ever claiming to have written them. That habit is exactly why so many sayings he merely repeated now travel the internet under his name.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented appearance
Earliest documented instance: “The Outlet” column, The Park Forest Star (Park Forest, IL) and Homewood-Flossmoor Star (Chicago, IL), 26 March 1961, p. 6, col. 8; chronology compiled in “Quote Origin: Things Turn Out Best for Folks Who Make the Best of the Way Things Turn Out,” Quote Investigator, 8 October 2014. John Wooden, as told to Jack Tobin, They Call Me Coach (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), 71 — epigraph of chapter 10, printed without ascription.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out’?” Last verified 27 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/things-turn-out-best-for-the-people-who-make-the-best-of/