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Who really said it

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity

Not Douglas Adams — actually Donald A. Adams Donald A. Adams President of Rotary International · spoke the line in a 1926 convention address
Disputed Free to reuse

The line comes from “Rotary’s Ideal of Service,” the convention address of Rotary International president Donald A. Adams, printed in The Rotarian in August 1926 — a different Adams entirely, and one who was speaking to a service club about business ethics. Douglas Adams was not born until 1952, and the earliest printing that credits him which Quote Investigator documents is a South Carolina newspaper page from 2002. One more wrinkle: Donald A. Adams’s own sentence ended “…and that thing is sincerity and integrity” — the smoother wording everyone quotes today was trimmed by a newspaper in 1932.

Last verified 9 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity” Donald A. Adams, "Rotary's Ideal of Service," The Rotarian, August 1926. Adams's 1926 text reads "...and that thing is sincerity and integrity"; the shortened wording comes from an Elmira Star-Gazette reprint of 6 February 1932. Commonly misattributed to Douglas Adams, who was born in 1952. Via quotle.info

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

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

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In context

Evoking the world of Donald A. Adams — author of the 1926 convention address "Rotary's Ideal of Service". Theme: "To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity". 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 "To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity". 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

Where the line actually comes from

Source
The Rotarian, August 1926
Article
“Rotary’s Ideal of Service: Convention Address of the President”
Speaker
Donald A. Adams, President of Rotary International
Location
Vol. 29, no. 2 — article begins p. 8; quotation on p. 60, col. 3

We should all put into practice the Golden Rule of dealing with the other fellow as we would like to have him deal with us. But Service is something more than selling goods which are all wool and a yard wide and making delivery according to the contract. To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money and that thing is sincerity and integrity. Convention address, 1926

Transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗ from the Google Books full view of the issue. Note the difference from the popular version: Adams said “and that thing is sincerity and integrity.” The word was dropped and a comma added when the Elmira Star-Gazette reprinted the line on 6 February 1932 — still crediting Donald A. Adams.

Magazine scan
The Rotarian, August 1926 on Google Books
Quote Investigator: the 1926 origin and the full attestation chain

How we verified this

  • August 1926 — Quote Investigator ↗ traces the line to the convention address of Rotary International president Donald A. Adams, printed in The Rotarian. His sentence ends “…and that thing is sincerity and integrity.”
  • 6 February 1932 — the Elmira Star-Gazette reprints it in a column called “Thoughts On Life” with “thing” removed and a comma added. That trimmed sentence is the one the internet still circulates, and it ran under Donald A. Adams’s name ↗. The credit then holds through a 1937 Forbes anthology and collections as late as 1995.
  • 1947, then 2002 — a Georgia newspaper column prints it as “D. A. Adams,” and QI points to exactly that kind of initials-only credit as the likely cause of the drift. The first printing crediting Douglas Adams that QI documents ↗ is The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, South Carolina, on 21 March 2002.
  • The timing settles it — Douglas Adams was born on 11 March 1952 and died on 11 May 2001 ↗. The line had been in print under another man’s name for a quarter of a century before he was born, and the credit only moved to him after his death.
Public domain

The sentence was first published in The Rotarian in August 1926, well before the 1931 cutoff, so the text is in the public domain in the United States. The shortened wording that circulates today is a one-word deletion made by a newspaper in 1932 — a trivial alteration to an already public-domain sentence, not new authorship, so it carries no separate claim.

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

How the wrong Adams got the credit

This is a surname collision that a set of initials turned into a permanent swap. Two men named Adams, seventy-odd years apart, and only one of them ever said it.

Douglas Adams Wrong Adams

Quote databases print it under his name with no source attached — Goodreads ↗ and AZQuotes ↗ both credit Douglas Adams and cite nothing, and it has spread from there into business and ministry material such as Busted Halo ↗. He was born on 11 March 1952 ↗, long after the line was in print.

“D. A. Adams” How it happened

A 1947 Georgia newspaper column printed the quotation credited only to “D. A. Adams.” Quote Investigator ↗ notes that this use of initials can cause confusion, and suggests an ambiguous “D. Adams” is what let the credit slide from the obscure Donald to the famous Douglas.

A 1932 newspaper trim Wording drift

Even the popular string is not quite what was said. Adams’s 1926 text ends “…and that thing is sincerity and integrity”; the word was dropped and a comma added when the Elmira Star-Gazette reprinted it on 6 February 1932, still under his name ↗.

Donald A. Adams, president of Rotary International, said it in the convention address published in The Rotarian in August 1926 — and Quote Investigator ↗ dates the first printing that credits Douglas Adams to a Chamber of Commerce page in The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, South Carolina, on 21 March 2002.

Context

A service-club speech, not a science-fiction novel

Read the sentence next to the paragraph it came from and the Douglas Adams attribution falls apart on tone alone. The 1926 original is a Rotary president telling a room of businessmen that shipping goods “all wool and a yard wide” and delivering on contract is not yet service — you have to add something you cannot invoice for. It is earnest civic-club rhetoric, and it is the opposite of the register Douglas Adams wrote in.

What makes this case unusually tidy is that the paper trail never really went cold. Donald A. Adams kept his credit through a 1932 newspaper column, a 1937 Forbes anthology and quotation collections into the 1990s. The swap looks less like a myth than like a filing error that stuck.

A 1947 column printed it as “D. A. Adams.” Two initials were all it took.

The one-word change nobody notices

Donald A. Adams said: “…something which cannot be bought or measured with money and that thing is sincerity and integrity.” The version in every quote database drops “thing” and adds a comma, which is smoother and slightly more quotable.

Quote Investigator dates that alteration to the Elmira Star-Gazette of 6 February 1932, where it still ran under Donald A. Adams’s name. So the famous string is a newspaper’s tidy-up of a 1926 sentence — genuinely his thought and very nearly his words, but not his exact ones.

Explore

Filed under

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

Character Work Kindness

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: To Give Real Service You Must Add Somethingquoteinvestigator.com

The investigation this page follows: the 1926 Rotarian origin, the 1932 wording change, the 1947 initials-only credit, and the 2002 shift to Douglas Adams.
The Rotarian, August 1926books.google.com

The scanned issue of Rotary International's magazine that carries Donald A. Adams's convention address.
Quote Investigator: Douglas Adams tag archivequoteinvestigator.com

QI's index of the quotations it has examined that are credited to Douglas Adams — several of which it reassigns to other people.
Wikipedia: Douglas Adamsen.wikipedia.org

Life dates for the author this line is usually pinned on: born 11 March 1952, died 11 May 2001.
Wikipedia: The Rotarianen.wikipedia.org

Background on the magazine that published the address — Rotary International's official monthly, first issued in 1911.

The man who actually said it

Donald A. Adams

Donald A. Adams

President of Rotary International · author of the 1926 convention address “Rotary’s Ideal of Service”

Donald A. Adams was president of Rotary International when he delivered the convention address published as “Rotary’s Ideal of Service” in the August 1926 issue of The Rotarian, the organisation’s official magazine. The passage about sincerity and integrity sits inside a plain-spoken argument that service means more than shipping honest goods on time. He was credited by name in print for close to seventy years — in a 1932 newspaper column, in B. C. Forbes’s Thoughts on the Business of Life in 1937, and in quotation collections as late as 1995 — before the line quietly changed hands.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Chicago

Donald A. Adams, “Rotary’s Ideal of Service: Convention Address of the President,” The Rotarian 29, no. 2 (August 1926): 8, quotation at 60. The familiar shortened wording first appears in “Thoughts On Life,” Elmira Star-Gazette (Elmira, NY), February 6, 1932, 6. Attestation chain traced by Quote Investigator, September 17, 2020.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity’?” Last verified 9 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/to-give-real-service-you-must-add-something-which-cannot-be/

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