Not quite — the actual line is “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan WoolfLangley 1911–1980 · Ryerson 1892–1965 · Woolf 1881–1943 · credited screenwriters, MGM 1939
Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) says it on arriving in Munchkinland in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz (1939), written for the screen by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf. The film, the character and the sentiment are all real — only the words drifted: the popular “I don’t think” replaces the hesitant, half-sung “I’ve a feeling” that is actually on the soundtrack.
“Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. We must be over the rainbow!” Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) in The Wizard of Oz, screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf (MGM, 1939). Often misquoted as "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." The line is not in L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel.
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In context
Evoking the world of Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf — Ryerson 1892–1965 · Woolf 1881–1943 · credited screenwriters, The Wizard of Oz (1939). Theme: "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore". 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 "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore". 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
What Dorothy actually says
Work
The Wizard of Oz
Released
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939 (dir. Victor Fleming)
Spoken by
Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) — a fictional character, not the author
Screenplay
Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, from L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel
Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. We must be over the rainbow!
Munchkinland, moments after the farmhouse lands
The film’s cutting continuity splits this across two shots — “Toto — I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” in a medium long shot, then “We must be over the rainbow!” on the cut — which is why the second sentence usually drops away in quotation. Transcriptions differ on how to render the contraction Garland sings out: Wikiquote ↗, the AFI list ↗ and the continuity all print “I’ve a feeling,” while some writers render it “I have a feeling.” That variance is a question of ear and house style; either way, the popular “I don’t think” appears in none of them.
The dialogue section of Wikiquote’s page for the film gives the line as “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. We must be over the rainbow!” and notes that it ranks #4 on the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 movie quotations — Wikiquote: The Wizard of Oz (1939 film) ↗.
The AFI’s own published list independently confirms the wording: entry #4 reads “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” — AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes ↗.
The line did not come from the book. A search of the full text of Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz turns up no sentence resembling it; Kansas is named throughout, but the equivalent moment is the Munchkins telling Dorothy they have never heard of the place — Project Gutenberg: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz ↗.
Australia’s ACMI notes that Noel Langley’s original screenplay had the line as “I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” and that Garland dropped the ‘got’ on camera — so even the shooting script and the soundtrack disagree by a word — ACMI: “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” ↗.
Screen writing is work-for-hire: the rights sit with the studio, not with Langley, Ryerson or Woolf. MGM released the film in 1939 and renewed the copyright in 1967, so it runs a 95-year term and is reported to enter the US public domain in 2035 ↗, with WB/Turner Entertainment Co. named as the current owners. Note the split: Baum’s 1900 novel is long in the public domain, but that does nothing for this line — the sentence is the film’s, and the film is still in copyright.
Fact-check
What people get wrong
Nobody is falsely credited here — the film is right, the character is right, the moment is right. What goes wrong is the wording, and, less obviously, which work is being credited.
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Wording“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” Never said
The most common form, and the one people search for — but it appears in no transcription of the film. Both Wikiquote ↗ and the AFI’s official list ↗ give “I’ve a feeling.” The swap trades Dorothy’s hesitancy for a knowing flatness she does not have in the scene.
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Wording“I’m afraid we’re not in Kansas anymore” Variant
A second recurring drift, described by ACMI as “a frequent favourite” among misrememberings of the line — ACMI ↗.
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Wording“We’re not in Kansas anymore” Toto dropped
In general use the dog is usually deleted, which quietly removes the whole point of the line: Dorothy is not narrating, she is talking to someone. The address to Toto is what makes it a child’s frightened aside rather than a wisecrack.
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OriginationL. Frank Baum’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) Not the source
Frequently assumed to be the origin, since the film is an adaptation. It is not: the full text of the novel contains no such sentence — see Project Gutenberg ↗. Baum’s Munchkins simply tell Dorothy they have never heard of Kansas. This line is the screenwriters’ invention, not Baum’s.
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AuthorshipJudy Garland, or Dorothy Gale Speaker, not author
Garland performed the line and Dorothy is the fictional character who says it; neither wrote it. The author of a screen line is the screenwriter — here a shared credit, per the film’s credited screenplay ↗ to Langley, Ryerson and Woolf.
✓What Dorothy actually says, on arriving in Munchkinland, is: “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. We must be over the rainbow!” — written for MGM’s 1939 film by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, and ranked #4 on the AFI’s 100 greatest movie quotes ↗.
Context
Why this one drifts
The misquote is a small act of editing that everybody performs unconsciously. “I’ve a feeling” is a strange, slightly archaic construction — tentative, dreamlike, the voice of a girl who is not yet sure the ground has changed. “I don’t think” is what a modern speaker would actually say, and it is flatter, wryer and more knowing. The line survives in the culture as a punchline about being out of one’s depth, and the punchline needs the confident version, so the confident version is what memory supplies.
The drift is helped along by the fact that the sentence almost never travels with its other half. On screen Dorothy immediately adds “We must be over the rainbow!” on the next cut — the wonder that makes sense of the hesitation. Detached from it, the line becomes a stock phrase for culture shock, and a stock phrase gets worn smooth by use.
“I’ve a feeling” is the voice of a girl who is not yet sure. “I don’t think” is the voice of someone telling a joke about her.
Read the full story
There is a second, quieter irony here: even the filmmakers could not keep the wording still. ACMI reports that Langley’s draft read “I’ve got a feeling” and that Garland misquoted it in performance. The sentence has been slipping by a word or two since before it was ever spoken — the public merely continued the tradition.
The line is also routinely credited to the wrong work. Because Baum’s novel is so famous and so freely reprinted, the quote is often presented as though it were a piece of children’s literature from 1900. It is not: it is a piece of studio screenwriting from 1939, and that distinction has legal teeth as well as historical ones — the book is public domain, the line is not.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Langley 1911–1980 · Ryerson 1892–1965 · Woolf 1881–1943 · credited screenwriters, The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The three writers who share the screen credit on MGM’s The Wizard of Oz. Noel Langley, a South African-born novelist and playwright, delivered the first adaptation and is generally credited with reshaping Baum’s book for the screen; Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf were brought in afterwards to rewrite, and the finished card reads “Screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf.” A long list of uncredited hands — among them Irving Brecher, Herbert Fields, Samuel Hoffenstein and lyricist Yip Harburg — also passed through the script, so no single writer can honestly be named as the author of this particular sentence.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf. The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Victor Fleming. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939. Based on L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Chicago: Geo. M. Hill Co., 1900). Line ranked #4 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes (2005).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/toto-i-dont-think-were-in-kansas-anymore