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Who really said it

Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like

Not Will Rogers — actually Robert Quillen Robert Quillen 1887–1948 · American newspaper humorist
Disputed Free to reuse

Quote Investigator ↗ traces the first full version to the syndicated humorist Robert Quillen, who printed it on 4 June 1928 in his column Paragraphs as a mock dictionary entry: “Americanism: Using money you haven’t earned to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like.” Will Rogers did speak a partly similar line about advertising in the 1931 film A Connecticut Yankee, but QI concludes the credit to him was “probably based on a misunderstanding” — and the earliest ascription to Rogers it located is a 1975 newspaper filler, decades after his death.

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

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like” Not Will Rogers. The line originates with newspaper humorist Robert Quillen (1887–1948): "Americanism: Using money you haven't earned to buy things you don't need to impress people you don't like." — "Paragraphs," Detroit Free Press, June 4, 1928, p. 6. The popular "things they don't want" version credited to Will Rogers is a later reworking; the earliest Rogers credit Quote Investigator located is September 25, 1975, decades after Rogers died in 1935. Verified via Quotle.info

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

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In context

Evoking the world of Robert Quillen — American journalist, humorist & small-town newspaper editor. Theme: "Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like". 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 "Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like". 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 1928 paragraph

Work
“Paragraphs” — Robert Quillen’s syndicated column
First printed
The Detroit Free Press, 4 June 1928, page 6, column 4
Popular wording
No documented source. The “things they don’t want” form credited to Will Rogers has no traced first printing; QI’s earliest Rogers ascription is 25 September 1975
What Rogers did say
A Connecticut Yankee (Fox, released 6 April 1931) — a one-third overlap about advertising

Americanism: Using money you haven’t earned to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like. The line as Quillen wrote it

Quillen’s original, printed as a mock dictionary entry. Note “don’t need” — every early printing from 1928 to the 1950s keeps need. The “don’t want” wording in the Rogers-credited version is a later drift.

Quote Investigator: the full 1905–2010 chronology

How the credit moved

  • 1928 — the first full version. Robert Quillen ran it as a one-line definition in his syndicated column Paragraphs. Quote Investigator verified the printing in The Detroit Free Press of 4 June 1928, page 6, and Wikiquote’s sourced entry ↗ cites the identical column and date. Seven years earlier, in August 1921, Quillen had published a partial version in his “Editorial Epigrams” column that lacked the “impress people you don’t like” ending.
  • 1929–1958 — the line travels with no name attached. Barry Popik’s file ↗ tracks it through the “Office Cat” column (January 1929), a Flapper Fanny cartoon caption (July 1929), Carl Sandburg’s The People, Yes in 1936 — where it is credited only to “the colyumist” — and a Milwaukee Sentinel column of 22 April 1958 that swaps “need” for “want.”
  • 1931 — what Will Rogers actually said. Reviewing A Connecticut Yankee on 18 April 1931, The Evening Star reported: “Mr. Rogers says among other things, that ‘advertising makes you spend money you haven’t got for things that you don’t want.’” Money you haven’t got, not money you haven’t earned, and no mention of impressing anyone. Wikiquote lists this line ↗ among Rogers’ sourced quotations; the money-and-impress saying appears nowhere in them.
  • 1975 — the Rogers credit finally appears. The earliest ascription to Will Rogers that Quote Investigator ↗ located is a “Thought for Today” filler in the Albuquerque Journal of 25 September 1975, in the now-familiar wording. Rogers had died in 1935. QI’s verdict: the linkage to him “was probably based on a misunderstanding.”
Public domain

The excerpt shown — Quillen’s original “Americanism” paragraph — was first published in a United States newspaper on 4 June 1928 and is in the public domain in the US, as all American works published before 1931 now are. Robert Quillen died in 1948. The separate popular rewording credited to Will Rogers has no identified author and no traced first printing, so no rights status can honestly be asserted for that variant.

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

Everyone who has been credited with this line

Few sayings have changed hands as often. Because it circulated as an unsigned newspaper filler, it was re-credited roughly once a decade — usually to whichever columnist or comedian had used it most recently. Quote Investigator’s chronology names at least eight claimants; here are the ones you are most likely to meet.

Will Rogers Misattributed

Rogers did say something adjacent. Reviewing A Connecticut Yankee in April 1931, The Evening Star quoted him: “advertising makes you spend money you haven’t got for things that you don’t want.” That is a partial match at best — no “money you haven’t earned,” no “people you don’t like.” QI ↗ concludes the linkage “was probably based on a misunderstanding,” and the earliest Rogers ascription it found is a “Thought for Today” filler in the Albuquerque Journal of 25 September 1975. Rogers died in 1935.

Walter Winchell Popularizer

Winchell printed it in September 1933 while crediting the radio personality Tony Wons. By 1935 the credit had flipped to Winchell himself, and Reader’s Digest ran “Broadway is a place where people spend money they haven’t earned…—Walter Winchell.” He later defended his ownership, telling readers in 1937 that “the quotation originally appeared here long before” ↗. It had in fact appeared in Quillen’s column five years before Winchell’s first printing.

Ken Murray Popularizer

In May 1939 the columnist Hy Gardner credited the comedian Ken Murray with “Hollywood is a place where you spend more than you make on things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like.” Leo Rosten repeated the Murray credit in his 1941 study Hollywood: The Movie Colony. Winchell, visibly irritated ↗, printed the Murray version with a sarcastic aside days later.

Emile Gauvreau Accidental claimant

Gauvreau used the saying in his memoir My Last Million Readers while explicitly crediting a Herald Tribune editorial rather than himself — but reviewers promptly credited him anyway. A 1941 Galveston book review ↗ quoted the passage straight back at him as his own. Actor Walter Slezak received the same accidental credit from Sheilah Graham in 1956.

Will Smith and Fight Club Later echoes

A 2010 biography of Will Smith reported that he liked to quote the line — and repeated the false Rogers attribution while doing so, which is how Smith himself ended up credited on quote sites. Separately, Tyler Durden’s “working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need” in the 1999 Fight Club film is a thematic descendant, not the same sentence; QI lists both ↗ as later users, not originators.

A South Carolina newspaperman wrote it as a joke definition of the American character, and never got the credit: Robert Quillen, “Paragraphs,” Detroit Free Press, 4 June 1928 ↗.

Context

Why this one landed on Will Rogers

The saying was born as a definition, not a lament. Quillen was a paragrapher — a now-extinct newspaper trade whose whole craft was the one-line zinger — and he filed this one under the heading “Americanism,” as though writing a sardonic entry for a dictionary of the national character. That framing is the joke. The modern Rogers-flavoured version, with its mournful “too many people,” sands the edge off and turns an epigram into a sermon.

Then it went feral. Because a paragraph like this travels by being retyped, not by being cited, the line spent thirty years attaching itself to whoever was standing nearest the microphone: Broadway columnists, Hollywood comedians, tabloid editors. Popik’s file even catches Carl Sandburg ↗ putting it into The People, Yes in 1936 with no name attached at all — just “typed the colyumist.” A line with no owner eventually finds the most famous plausible one, and for a folksy American wisecrack about money, that is Will Rogers.

A line with no owner eventually finds the most famous plausible owner. For a folksy American wisecrack about money, that is always going to be Will Rogers.

The two details that give the misattribution away

“Need” became “want,” and the joke changed. Every early printing Quillen, the “Office Cat” column, Flapper Fanny, Winchell, Ken Murray, Walter Slezak uses need. Buying things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like is a coherent satire of status spending. The Rogers-credited version says want, which is a different and much stranger claim. Popik’s file records the swap surfacing in a Milwaukee Sentinel column on 22 April 1958, still in the old Broadway framing and still with nobody named Rogers anywhere near it.

Rogers’ real line is missing two of the three parts. Reviewing A Connecticut Yankee in April 1931, The Evening Star reported Rogers saying that advertising “makes you spend money you haven’t got for things that you don’t want.” No money you haven’t earned; no people you don’t like. It is a one-third overlap, and it is almost certainly the seed of the whole confusion.

A genuine Quillen–Rogers connection exists — just not this one. In 1934 the Fox screenwriter Lamar Trotti and producer George Marshall travelled to Fountain Inn to use Quillen as the prototype for a Will Rogers picture, Life Begins at 40, in which Rogers played a small-town newspaper editor. The credits thanked Quillen for “contributing dialogue.” So Quillen really did put words in Will Rogers’ mouth. Just not these ones.

Explore

Filed under

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

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Using Money You Haven't Earned…quoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation. Credits Robert Quillen (1928), tracks every claimant from Winchell to Fight Club, and dates the earliest Will Rogers credit to 1975.
"Many people spend money they haven't earned…"barrypopik.com

Barry Popik's citation file: nineteen dated printings from 1928 to 2009, including Carl Sandburg's 1936 use and the 1958 "want" variant.
Robert Quillen (sourced quotations)en.wikiquote.org

Carries the "Americanism" line in its sourced section with the same Detroit Free Press, 4 June 1928 citation.
Will Rogers (quotations)en.wikiquote.org

Documents Rogers' genuine A Connecticut Yankee line about advertising. The money-and-impress saying appears nowhere in his sourced quotations.
Robert Quillenen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the real author: the Fountain Inn Tribune, four hundred newspapers by 1932, and his dialogue credit on a Will Rogers film.
A Connecticut Yankee (1931 film)en.wikipedia.org

The Fox picture, released 6 April 1931, in which Rogers spoke the partly similar advertising line that likely seeded the misattribution.

The man who actually wrote it

Robert Quillen, the sage of Fountain Inn

Robert Quillen

1887–1948 · American journalist, humorist & small-town newspaper editor

Verni Robert Quillen was a Kansas-born newspaperman who spent more than a quarter century in Fountain Inn, South Carolina, editing the tiny Fountain Inn Tribune while quietly becoming one of the most widely syndicated humorists in America. By 1932 his editorials, paragraphs, cartoons and one-liners were running in four hundred newspapers across the United States, Canada, England and the Far East, and a biographer called him the best “paragrapher” of his day. He was a genuine eccentric — he erected a monument in his yard to Eve, the first woman, published his own obituary sixteen years before he died, and built himself a small Greek temple to write in that he never once used.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source & chronology

Robert Quillen, “Paragraphs,” The Detroit Free Press, June 4, 1928, 6, col. 4. Chronology and attribution history: Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Using Money You Haven’t Earned To Buy Things You Don’t Need To Impress People You Don’t Like,” April 21, 2016; with additional citations gathered by Barry Popik.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/too-many-people-spend-money-they-havent-earned-to-buy/

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