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Who really said it

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important

Not Eisenhower’s wording — and he was quoting someone else An unnamed “former college president” — quoted by Dwight D. Eisenhower Quoted by Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) at Evanston, Illinois, 19 August 1954
Disputed — the thought is real and the 1954 speech is documented, but the popular wording is a retelling, and Eisenhower explicitly declined the credit. Rights unconfirmed

Eisenhower did put this idea into a speech — his address to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Evanston, Illinois, on 19 August 1954 — but his words were absolute, not hedged: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” The word “seldom” appears nowhere in the speech. And he prefaced the line by saying he was “quoting the statement of a former college president,” a man neither Eisenhower nor any later researcher has identified. The familiar “seldom…seldom” version most likely began as a listener’s paraphrase that hardened into a quotation; Quote Investigator also allows that Eisenhower may have used more than one version of the expression, though no second version has ever been produced.

Last verified 3 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important” Dwight D. Eisenhower did not say "What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important." Addressing the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Evanston, Illinois, on 19 August 1954, he quoted "the statement of a former college president": "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." The word "seldom" does not appear in the speech, and Eisenhower did not claim the line as his own. Quote Investigator traces the hedged wording to listeners' retellings beginning later in 1954. — Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Use the credit shown above instead.

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In context

Evoking the world of An unnamed "former college president". Theme: "What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important". 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.

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Provenance

What Eisenhower actually said

Documented in
Address at the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Evanston, Illinois
Delivered
19 August 1954, on the campus of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
His actual wording
“The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent” — no “seldom” anywhere in the speech
Earliest “seldom” version
A listener’s recollection printed in the Life Office Management Association annual conference proceedings, 1954, p. 16 (per Quote Investigator)

Now, my friends of this convocation, there is another thing we can hope to learn from your being with us. I illustrate it by quoting the statement of a former college president, and I can understand the reason for his speaking as he did. I am sure President Miller can. This President said, ‘I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.’ Evanston, 19 August 1954

The passage in full, from the official transcript. Two details do all the work: Eisenhower attributes the maxim to a former college president — while addressing Northwestern’s sitting president, J. Roscoe Miller, as a separate person in the very next clause — and his phrasing is absolute (“never urgent”), not hedged.

Presidential address, official transcript
Read the full 19 August 1954 address
Quote Investigator: the full citation history

The paper trail, in order

  • 19 August 1954 — addressing the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Evanston, Eisenhower says he will “illustrate it by quoting the statement of a former college president,” who had said: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” The word “seldom” is not in the speech (American Presidency Project ↗).
  • Later in 1954 — the earliest “seldom” wording in Quote Investigator’s chronology. A speaker at a Life Office Management Association conference, Morris G. Fuller of State Farm Life Insurance, relays the recollection of Norris Pitt, who had heard the Evanston address: “the things that are urgent are seldom important and the things that are important are seldom urgent” — QI cites Fuller’s talk in the conference proceedings, start page 12, quote page 16 (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • 1962 — the phrase turns up in fiction. John le Carré’s A Murder of Quality has a character say “what is important is seldom urgent. Urgent equals ephemeral, and ephemeral equals unimportant” — QI cites page 111 of the 1980 Bantam Books edition of the novel first published in 1962 (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • 1973 and 1975 — newspapers attach the softened version to Eisenhower without quotation marks: the Winnipeg Free Press (“the really important matters were seldom urgent, and that the most urgent matters were seldom important”) and the Christian Science Monitor (“important matters were seldom urgent and most urgent matters were seldom important”) (Quote Investigator ↗).

No rights status can honestly be asserted for the line as it circulates. Eisenhower’s 19 August 1954 address is a work of the United States government and carries no copyright — but the popular “seldom…seldom” sentence is not in it. That wording traces to listeners’ paraphrases whose author and first fixed publication cannot be pinned down, and the printed appearances Quote Investigator documents (1954 conference proceedings, a 1962 novel, 1970s newspapers) are all post-1930 texts belonging to their publishers — none of which is a source for an Eisenhower utterance, only a repetition of one.

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

A double misattribution

Two separate things are wrong here, and a third “correction” that circulates online is wrong too. The wording isn’t Eisenhower’s; the thought isn’t Eisenhower’s; and the man usually named as the real source isn’t the real source either.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Paraphrase

What he said at Evanston was absolute: “The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” Not “seldom” — never. The hedged version appears nowhere in the transcript (American Presidency Project ↗).

Dwight D. Eisenhower He credited someone else

He introduced the line with “I illustrate it by quoting the statement of a former college president” — an explicit refusal of the credit. Quote Investigator concludes he “credited an unnamed ‘former college president’” and does not identify the man (Quote Investigator ↗).

J. Roscoe Miller, president of Northwestern University Also wrong

A popular “correction” names Miller as the college president Eisenhower was quoting — Wikipedia’s Priority Matrix ↗ article still says the remark “was delivered as a quote from sitting president of Northwestern University J. Roscoe Miller.” But Eisenhower said former president, and referred to Miller separately in the same breath (“I am sure President Miller can”). Quote Investigator is blunt about it: “Eisenhower was not ascribing the saying to Miller who was a current president and not a former president” (Quote Investigator ↗).

The documented fact is a modest one: on 19 August 1954 Eisenhower repeated, in absolute terms, a maxim he attributed to an unnamed former college president — and the hedged “seldom” version that now carries his name grew out of listeners’ retellings, beginning later that same year (Quote Investigator ↗).

Context

Why the paraphrase beat the original

The line Eisenhower actually repeated is a harder, funnier claim than the one that now circulates. “The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent” is an absolute — a paradox stated with no escape hatch, which is what makes it land in a speech. The version that survived softens both halves to “seldom,” converting an aphorism into something closer to a defensible management rule. That is almost certainly why it spread: it is the form you can actually build a matrix on.

And build one people did. The urgent/important grid is known as the Eisenhower Method ↗, and Wikipedia’s own account of it prints the 1954 sentence while noting that “Eisenhower did not claim this insight for his own, but attributed it to an unnamed ‘former college president.’” The framework carries a name its namesake never asked for, built on a sentence he never quite said.

“The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”

How a 1954 speech turned into a quotation

Quote Investigator’s chronology shows the drift happening almost immediately. Later in 1954, a speaker at a Life Office Management Association conference passed on the recollection of an attendee at the Evanston address, in the softened form — QI cites the conference proceedings at page 16. By 1962 the phrase “what is important is seldom urgent” had migrated into fiction, in John le Carré’s A Murder of Quality. By the 1970s newspapers were attaching the softened version straight to Eisenhower.

QI leaves one door open, and so do we: it notes that as an alternative to faulty transmission, “Eisenhower may have used more than one version of the expression.” No such second version has been produced. Until one is, the transcript of 19 August 1954 is the only documented thing Eisenhower said on the subject — and it does not contain the sentence people quote.

Explore

Filed under

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

Time Work Wisdom

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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 Origin: What Is Important Is Seldom Urgent and What Is Urgent Is Seldom Importantquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: the 19 August 1954 Evanston wording, the later-1954 conference retelling that introduced “seldom,” le Carré in 1962, the 1973 and 1975 newspaper versions, and why Eisenhower was not quoting J. Roscoe Miller.
Address at the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Evanston, Illinoiswww.presidency.ucsb.edu

The full transcript of the 19 August 1954 address — the primary source, containing “I illustrate it by quoting the statement of a former college president” and the absolute “never urgent” wording.
Dwight D. Eisenhower — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s sourced 1950s section carries the 1954 line with the note that he is quoting an unnamed “former college president.” The word “seldom” does not appear anywhere on the page.
Time management — the Eisenhower Methoden.wikipedia.org

Explains the urgent/important grid that bears Eisenhower’s name, quotes the 1954 sentence, and states that he “did not claim this insight for his own.”
Priority Matrixen.wikipedia.org

An example of the secondary error in the wild: this article asserts the remark “was delivered as a quote from sitting president of Northwestern University J. Roscoe Miller” — a claim the speech transcript itself contradicts.
The Evanston Report: The Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, 1954archive.org

The official 378-page report of the 1954 Evanston assembly Eisenhower addressed, published by the World Council of Churches and digitised with the rights holder’s permission — free to read.

The man who gets the credit

The general who passed the line along

Dwight D. Eisenhower

1890–1969 · Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force · 34th President of the United States

Eisenhower commanded the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe from 1943 to 1945 and served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. A reputation for ruthless prioritisation is exactly why a maxim about sorting the urgent from the important stuck to his name so readily — the productivity world still calls the resulting grid the Eisenhower Method. But at Evanston he was passing along someone else’s observation and said so plainly: the “former college president” he credited has never been identified.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Address at the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Evanston, Illinois,” 19 August 1954, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-second-assembly-the-world-council-churches-evanston-illinois. The popular “seldom…seldom” wording does not appear in that address; for its transmission see Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: What Is Important Is Seldom Urgent and What Is Urgent Is Seldom Important,” 9 May 2014, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/09/urgent/.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important’?” Last verified 3 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/what-is-important-is-seldom-urgent-and-what-is-urgent-is/

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