Who really said it

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life

Q: Did Golda Meir say "Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life"?

No. The oldest, most carefully edited quote references credit this full passage to Foster C. McClellan, an obscure American inspirational writer, sourced to a collection titled "Poor Man's College." No speech, book, interview, or letter by Golda Meir is known to contain it, and her Wikiquote page does not list it in any section — the Meir credit appears only on modern quote-aggregator sites with no source.

Not Golda Meir — traced to Foster C. McClellan Foster C. McClellan 20th-century American inspirational writer · dates uncertain

Disputed In copyright

The oldest, most carefully edited quote references credit this full passage to Foster C. McClellan, an obscure American inspirational writer, sourced to a collection titled “Poor Man’s College.” No speech, book, interview, or letter by Golda Meir is known to contain it, and her Wikiquote page does not list it in any section — the Meir credit appears only on modern quote-aggregator sites with no source.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed — copy with the correction

“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life” Documented under Foster C. McClellan (source: "Poor Man's College"); popularly misattributed to Golda Meir, whose works contain no trace of it.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Estate of Foster C. McClellan (or original publisher)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Foster C. McClellan — dates uncertain. Theme: "Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life". 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 "Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life". 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 source

Documented wording by: Foster C. McClellan
Source cited: “Poor Man’s College” (inspirational collection)
Popularly misattributed to: Golda Meir
Golda Meir primary source: None located

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

The line almost always travels as this two-sentence pair; both halves are attributed together to Foster C. McClellan in the earliest careful references.

Foster C. McClellan on The Quotations Page

How the trail runs

The older, editorially curated Quotations Page credits the full passage to Foster C. McClellan, sourced to “Poor Man’s College” — not to Golda Meir.
Quotes.net likewise files the identical wording under Foster C. McClellan.
Golda Meir’s Wikiquote page does not contain the line in any section — sourced, disputed, or misattributed.
The Meir credit surfaces only on unsourced aggregators such as Goodreads, which warns its quotes are “not verified.”

In copyright

The wording is a 20th-century inspirational text — documented under Foster C. McClellan and clearly post-1931 — so it is treated as in-copyright. Because the exact first-publication date of “Poor Man’s College” is not established, the rights holder is given conservatively; a public-domain claim would be unsafe.

Fact-check

Why Golda Meir gets the credit

The line is one of the internet’s stock “strong-woman” inspirational quotes, and Golda Meir — Israel’s formidable prime minister — is a magnet for exactly this kind of sourceless feel-good wisdom.

Golda Meir popular misattribution

Credited to Meir across BrainyQuote, Goodreads, and PassItOn — none of which cite a Meir speech, book, or interview, and none of which predate the McClellan attribution.

The best-sourced trail leads to Foster C. McClellan and the collection “Poor Man’s College,” per the Quotations Page — not to Golda Meir, whose documented writings and sourced Wikiquote entry contain no trace of it.

Context

A borrowed voice

The sentiment — self-trust as a lifelong project of character — is the standard fare of mid-century American inspirational booklets, and it reads nothing like Golda Meir’s actual documented voice, which was terse, political, and often bleak (“Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself”).

The migration is a textbook case: an aphorism from a forgotten writer attaches to a globally famous name, gains authority from that name, and then circulates faster than anyone stops to ask for a source.

The oldest careful trail leads to Foster C. McClellan — not to Golda Meir.

Explore

Filed under

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

Character Growth

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 Quotations Page — Foster C. McClellanquotationspage.com

Older, editorially curated database crediting the full passage to McClellan, source “Poor Man’s College.”

Quotes.net — Foster C. McClellanquotes.net

Independently files the identical wording under Foster C. McClellan.

Wikiquote — Golda Meiren.wikiquote.org

Sourced Meir compilation; the line is absent from every section, including disputed/misattributed.

Goodreads — the Meir attributiongoodreads.com

Typical unsourced aggregator credit to Meir, carrying Goodreads’ own “not verified” disclaimer.

PassItOn — Meir posterpassiton.com

Inspirational-poster site that helped spread the sourceless Golda Meir credit.

The author

About Foster C. McClellan

Foster C. McClellan

20th-century American inspirational writer · dates uncertain

Foster C. McClellan was a mid-20th-century American author of short inspirational and motivational pieces, including the booklet Thoughts for a Friend. His aphorisms circulated through gift booklets and syndicated inspirational columns such as the collection “Poor Man’s College,” which is where the earliest careful quote references place this line. He is little-documented today, which is precisely why his words drifted to a far more famous name.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented attribution

Foster C. McClellan, quoted in “Poor Man’s College,” as recorded in The Quotations Page (quotationspage.com, quote 7993) and Quotes.net (quote 42999). No primary Golda Meir source is documented.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/trust-yourself-create-the-kind-of-self-that-you-will-be