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Who really said it

To be popular is easy; to be right, when right is unpopular, is noble

Not quite Carnegie — he said “is difficult,” not “is noble” Andrew Carnegie 1835–1919 · Steel magnate, philanthropist and anti-imperialist
Disputed Free to reuse

Carnegie really did say a sentence almost exactly like this — at a dinner given in his honour by the Lotos Club in New York on 27 January 1900, in the middle of a passage attacking war fever and the slogan “our country, right or wrong.” But the three newspapers that carried the wire report the next morning all end it the same way: “to be right when right is unpopular is difficult.” The circulating version swaps the last word for noble, which turns a rueful admission into a compliment.

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

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“To be popular is easy; to be right, when right is unpopular, is noble” Andrew Carnegie, speech at a dinner in his honour, The Lotos Club, New York, 27 January 1900: “To be popular is easy; to be right when right is unpopular is difficult.” Reported in The San Francisco Call, 28 January 1900, p. 16. The widely circulated ending “is noble” appears in no contemporaneous report of the speech.

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In context

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Provenance

The Lotos Club dinner, New York, 27 January 1900

Occasion
Dinner in Carnegie’s honour, The Lotos Club, New York, 27 January 1900
Text quoted from
The San Francisco Call
Printed
28 January 1900, p. 16 — from a wire report datelined “New York, Jan. 27”, also run that morning by The Indianapolis Journal (p. 7) and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (p. 1)
Club’s own text
Speeches at the Lotos Club (1901), 351–56 — edited, and without this sentence

As for money given to beggars of whose needs and habits we are ignorant, I can conceive of no use of money so well calculated to increase pauperism and demoralize the people. To be popular is easy; to be right when right is unpopular is difficult. When the passions are aroused and the war fever rages any man can be popular who howls for war, but the most valuable citizen of the State at that time will probably be the citizen who opposes the drawing of the sword. Lotos Club dinner · 27 January 1900

Transcribed from the Library of Congress’s OCR of the Call’s page, with obvious scanning slips corrected. The Indianapolis Journal breaks the line into two sentences (“To be popular is easy. To be right when right is unpopular is difficult.”); the Seattle Post-Intelligencer punctuates it exactly as the modern misquote does — “to be popular is easy; to be right, when right is unpopular, is difficult” — which is how far the corruption really extends: one word.

Digitised newspaper page
The San Francisco Call, 28 January 1900, page 16
The San Francisco Call, 28 January 1900 (Library of Congress)

How we know

  • Carnegie was guest of honour at a Lotos Club dinner in New York on the evening of 27 January 1900. The wire report of his remarks ran the next morning in The San Francisco Call ↗, which prints: “To be popular is easy; to be right when right is unpopular is difficult.”
  • The identical wire text appears the same day on page 7 of The Indianapolis Journal ↗ under “Carnegie’s Philosophy”, and on the front page of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ↗. All three end the sentence “is difficult”; a phrase search of the same archive for the “is noble” form returns nothing.
  • The Lotos Club printed its own text of the speech a year later in Speeches at the Lotos Club ↗ (pp. 351–56). That version is shorter and tidier, and the sentence is not in it — nor is the “our country, right or wrong” passage that surrounds it in the press reports.
  • The wording that circulates today comes down a much thinner line: Wikiquote ↗ lists it under Undated, citing a 2002 article in The Nation ↗, which gives the “noble” form with no source of its own.
Public domain

The words were spoken in January 1900 and printed in United States newspapers on 28 January 1900; the Lotos Club’s volume of the speech followed in 1901. All of it was published in the United States well before 1931, so the text quoted here is in the 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 it goes wrong

This is not a fake quote. It is a real Carnegie sentence with its last word replaced — and, in most retellings, with the wrong occasion attached or none at all.

“…is noble” Mis-worded

Every contemporaneous report ends the sentence “is difficult.” The word noble does turn up three sentences later in the same passage — “It should be the symbol of what is right, noble and just” — in the report in The San Francisco Call ↗, so a bleed from one line to the other is a plausible route, though nothing documents the swap.

A June 1885 talk to Pittsburgh business students Wrong speech

The line is sometimes pinned to Carnegie’s 1885 address The Road to Business Success. The text of that address ↗ contains neither “popular is easy” nor the word “unpopular” anywhere in it — and neither does the book it was later collected in.

No period source at all Undated

Wikiquote ↗ files the “noble” version under Undated, its sole citation a 2002 piece in The Nation ↗ — which quotes it with no date, no occasion and no source.

He did say it, on 27 January 1900, at a Lotos Club dinner in his own honour — and he said difficult: “To be popular is easy; to be right when right is unpopular is difficult” ↗.

Context

What he was actually arguing about

This is not a business maxim, though it is usually sold as one. Carnegie said it while explaining, to a room of admirers, why he had spent the previous eighteen months making himself unpopular over the Philippines. The San Francisco Call ran the report under the subhead “Turning to National Policy, the Millionaire Justifies His Course in Striving Against Imperialism”; the Seattle Post-Intelligencer put it on the front page as “Carnegie Talks Again.”

The sentence is the hinge of the passage, and the sentences on either side of it make the meaning unmissable: “When the passions are aroused and the war fever rages any man can be popular who howls for war, but the most valuable citizen of the State at that time will probably be the citizen who opposes the drawing of the sword.” Then: “I repudiate with scorn the immoral doctrine, our country, right or wrong.” Read in place, “difficult” is the honest word. “Noble” is the word a poster wants.

To be popular is easy; to be right when right is unpopular is difficult.

Why the Lotos Club’s own book doesn’t contain the line

The Club published its after-dinner speeches in 1901, and Carnegie’s 27 January 1900 remarks are there at pages 351–56. That text is noticeably shorter and smoother than the wire report, and it has no “popular is easy” sentence at all — the nearest thing is “This may seem harsh doctrine, perhaps not popular; but I am not concerned about popularity; I know I am right.” The whole passage on war fever and “our country, right or wrong” is absent too.

There is a nice irony in that, because in the very same speech Carnegie complains about exactly this problem. Describing an earlier address of his, he says the reporter present “took a few of the more striking words of my address, and I scarcely recognized myself in print the next day,” and adds: “Public speakers have to beware of the epigrammatic.” The epigram the reporters kept that night is the one still in circulation — only they kept it more accurately than the internet has.

Explore

Filed under

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

Character Courage Truth

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.

The San Francisco Call, 28 January 1900loc.gov

The issue whose page 16 carries the wire report, under the headline “Carnegie’s View as to Charity.” This is the cleanest rendering of the sentence.
The Indianapolis Journal, 28 January 1900loc.gov

Page 7 of Part One prints the same wire text as “Carnegie’s Philosophy,” splitting the line into two sentences.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 28 January 1900loc.gov

Front-page version, headlined “Carnegie Talks Again” — and the one whose punctuation matches the modern misquote comma for comma.
Speeches at the Lotos Club (1901)archive.org

The Club’s own privately printed volume; Carnegie’s 27 January 1900 speech runs pp. 351–56 in an edited form that omits the sentence entirely.
Andrew Carnegie — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists the “noble” wording under its Undated heading, with a 2002 magazine article as its only citation.
“An Imperial Moment” (2002)thenation.com

The Nation piece that Wikiquote cites; it prints the “noble” version with no date, occasion or source attached.

About the speaker

Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie

1835–1919 · Steel magnate, philanthropist and anti-imperialist

Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, Carnegie built the largest steel business in the United States and then spent the rest of his life giving the proceeds away — most famously in free public libraries. He was also, by 1900, one of the loudest American opponents of the annexation of the Philippines, which is the argument he was in the middle of when he said this. The Lotos Club dinner speech shows both halves of him at once: an unsentimental lecture on why indiscriminate charity breeds pauperism, followed by a flat refusal to say my country, right or wrong.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Chicago

Andrew Carnegie, speech at the dinner in his honour, The Lotos Club, New York, 27 January 1900; reported in “Carnegie’s View as to Charity,” The San Francisco Call, 28 January 1900, p. 16 (Library of Congress, Chronicling America). The Lotos Club’s own text of the same speech appears in Speeches at the Lotos Club, arranged by John Elderkin, Chester S. Lord and Horatio N. Fraser (New York: privately printed, 1901), 351–56, where the sentence does not appear.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘To be popular is easy; to be right, when right is unpopular, is noble’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/to-be-popular-is-easy-to-be-right-when-right-is-unpopular/

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