Did Abraham Lincoln say "Whatever you are, be a good one"?

Q: Did Abraham Lincoln say "Whatever you are, be a good one"?

No. There is no Lincoln speech, letter, or document that contains this line, and the first record tying it to him surfaces in 1946 — 81 years after his death. The earliest documented version, "Whatever you are, try to be a good one," appears in Laurence Hutton's 1897 memoir, where he recalls the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray saying it to him as a boy — though even that credit rests on how well Hutton remembered the encounter.

Who really said it

Whatever you are, be a good one

Not Abraham Lincoln — most likely William Makepeace Thackeray William Makepeace Thackeray 1811–1863 · English novelist (author of Vanity Fair)

Disputed Free to reuse

There is no Lincoln speech, letter, or document that contains this line, and the first record tying it to him surfaces in 1946 — 81 years after his death. The earliest documented version, “Whatever you are, try to be a good one,” appears in Laurence Hutton’s 1897 memoir, where he recalls the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray saying it to him as a boy — though even that credit rests on how well Hutton remembered the encounter.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Whatever you are, be a good one” Not Abraham Lincoln. Earliest documented as "Whatever you are, try to be a good one," credited to novelist William Makepeace Thackeray in Laurence Hutton's 1897 memoir. The Lincoln attribution first appears in 1946, with no source.

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

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

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In context

Evoking the world of William Makepeace Thackeray — English novelist & satirist. Theme: "Whatever you are, be a good one". 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 "Whatever you are, be a good one". 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

Original wording: “Whatever you are, try to be a good one”
Reported speaker: William Makepeace Thackeray, to the boy Laurence Hutton (recalled from the 1850s)
Earliest source: Laurence Hutton, memoir in St. Nicholas magazine, March 1897 (later collected as A Boy I Knew, 1898)
First Lincoln credit: 1946, in H. L. Gee’s anthology — no citation given

Whatever you are, try to be a good one.

As recalled by Laurence Hutton: Thackeray laid his hand on the boy’s head and asked what he meant to be; told the answer, the novelist replied with these words. The clipped modern form — “Whatever you are, be a good one” — and the Lincoln credit both came decades later.

Quote Investigator: the full chronology

How we verified this

Quote Investigator finds the earliest form in Laurence Hutton’s 1897 memoir, where the words are Thackeray’s: “Whatever you are, try to be a good one.”
By 1904 newspapers were printing the shortened “Whatever you are, be a good one,” still crediting Thackeray, per QI’s chronology.
The first tie to Lincoln appears only in 1946 — 81 years after his death, with no source — and Mental Floss lists it among quotes commonly misattributed to him.

Public domain

The earliest documented wording was published in 1897 (Hutton’s memoir in St. Nicholas) and the shortened form by 1904 — both well before 1931 — so the text is in the public domain in the United States. Thackeray died in 1863; Hutton in 1904.

Fact-check

The attribution problem

This is one of the most common quotes falsely pinned on Abraham Lincoln — a feel-good line with no basis in anything he wrote or said.

Abraham Lincoln Misattributed

No Lincoln speech, letter, or document contains this line. Per Quote Investigator, the earliest link to Lincoln is a 1946 anthology that gave no source — 81 years after his death. Mental Floss lists it among quotes commonly misattributed to him.

“be a good one” vs. “try to be a good one” Altered

The familiar phrasing drops a word. The earliest documented form is “Whatever you are, try to be a good one”; the shorter, punchier version only took hold from about 1904, per QI.

The best-supported origin is William Makepeace Thackeray, recorded in Laurence Hutton’s 1897 memoir — though, as Quote Investigator cautions, that credit depends on the reliability of Hutton’s childhood memory.

Context

Why it stuck to Lincoln

Short, warm, and quietly commanding, the line fits the folk image of Lincoln as a plain-spoken moral teacher — exactly the profile that makes him a magnet for orphan quotes. Once an unsourced 1946 anthology attached his name, reprint culture and, later, social media did the rest.

The irony is that the sentiment was never his. It reaches print through the memoir of a young American who says a visiting British novelist — Thackeray — laid a hand on his head and offered the advice. Even that is a memory recorded four decades after the fact.

No Lincoln document contains the line; the Lincoln credit first appears in 1946.

Explore

Filed under

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

Character Work

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 Origin: Whatever You Are, Try To Be a Good Onequoteinvestigator.com

The definitive chronology: earliest 1897 attestation crediting Thackeray, 1904 shortened form, first Lincoln credit in 1946.

Lists this line among quotes falsely credited to Lincoln, tracing it to Hutton’s 1897 memoir of Thackeray.

Abraham Lincoln (Misattributed)en.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s sourced and misattributed sections for Lincoln, a standard cross-check for spurious Lincoln quotations.

William Makepeace Thackerayen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the Victorian novelist named as the line’s probable original speaker.

A Boy I Knew, and Four Dogs (1898)archive.org

Laurence Hutton’s memoir, the collected form of the 1897 St. Nicholas serialization that is the earliest source for the saying.

The reported speaker

About William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray

1811–1863 · English novelist & satirist

William Makepeace Thackeray was a leading Victorian novelist, best known for Vanity Fair (1847–48), a satirical panorama of English society. Born in Calcutta and educated at Cambridge, he was a rival of Dickens and a fixture of London literary life. The line credited to him survives only secondhand, in the boyhood memoir of the American essayist Laurence Hutton.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented source

Earliest documented in Laurence Hutton, memoir serialized in St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks 24, no. 5 (March 1897): 409–413, quoting William Makepeace Thackeray; later collected in A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1898).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Whatever you are, be a good one’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/whatever-you-are-be-a-good-one