Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Yes, I Am Drunk, But You Are Ugly. Tomorrow I Will Be Sober, And You Will Still Be Ugly

Not W. C. Fields — an anonymous 19th-century joke No verified speaker Credited to W. C. Fields (1880–1946) and to Winston Churchill – neither is on record in these words
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Quote Investigator ↗ traces this to a family of anecdotes told with different people in the roles, the earliest version it cites appearing in an 1863 Ohio newspaper. The “ugly” wording belongs to an unverified 1946 story about Winston Churchill and the Labour MP Bessie Braddock; the only version W. C. Fields is actually on record for is a line from the 1934 film It’s a Gift, and in it the insult is “crazy,” not “ugly.”

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Yes, I Am Drunk, But You Are Ugly. Tomorrow I Will Be Sober, And You Will Still Be Ugly” Not W. C. Fields. The "drunk / ugly" wording comes from an unverified 1946 anecdote about Winston Churchill and MP Bessie Braddock; Fields's actual line, in the 1934 film It's a Gift, says "crazy," not "ugly." The joke itself is anonymous, documented from 1863. — Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to W. C. Fields. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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

In context

Evoking the themes of character, truth and change. Theme: "Yes, I Am Drunk, But You Are Ugly. Tomorrow I Will Be Sober, And You Will Still Be Ugly". 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 "Yes, I Am Drunk, But You Are Ugly. Tomorrow I Will Be Sober, And You Will Still Be Ugly". 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

Where the joke actually comes from

Earliest version cited by QI
Urbana Union (Urbana, Ohio), 1 July 1863
Earliest full dialogue readable in the original
The Story of My Life, vol. 5
Published
Augustus J. C. Hare, 1900 — diary entry dated 16 July 1882, p. 362
W. C. Fields’s actual line
It’s a Gift (Paramount, 1934) — where the insult is “crazy,” not “ugly”

“Do you know who I am?” he said; “I am a Member of Parliament and I am Mr. A. B.” — “I don’t know about that,” said one of the roughs, “but I know that you’re a damned fool.” — “You’re drunk,” said A. B.; “you don’t know what you’re saying.” — “Well, perhaps I am rather drunk to-night,” said the man, “but I shall be sober to-morrow morning; but you’re a damned fool to-night, and you’ll be a damned fool to-morrow morning.” Hare’s diary · 16 July 1882

This is the joke’s skeleton, not the quote as you know it. Hare records it as a story told to a house party by Sir Stafford Northcote about an unnamed MP jostled on his way to the Commons — and the permanent defect is foolishness. Quote Investigator cites an even earlier variant from 1863. The word “ugly” does not enter until the Churchill telling.

1900 printing, scanned
Read Hare’s diary at page 362 on the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator: every dated telling, 1863 to 1946

The paper trail, in order

  • 1 July 1863 — a filler item in the Urbana Union of Urbana, Ohio gives a drunk’s reply to a temperance lecturer: he will get over being drunk, but the lecturer will never get over being a fool. This is the earliest version Quote Investigator cites ↗.
  • 16 July 1882 — Augustus J. C. Hare’s diary records the full exchange, set outside the House of Commons and told at a house party by Sir Stafford Northcote. It was printed in The Story of My Life, vol. 5, in 1900 — page 362 of the scan ↗.
  • 5 August 1882 — three weeks later the same exchange is already in American newspapers: the Daily Republican-Sentinel of Milwaukee prints a full version on 5 August 1882 (p. 5, col. 2) in which the drunk answers “I shall be sober to-morrow, whereas you will remain the fool you are to-day.” That is eighteen years before Hare’s volume appeared, so 1900 is where the diary telling can first be read in the original — not the joke’s first appearance in print. Quote Investigator ↗ tracks it onward through 1890, 1892, 1904, 1911 and 1932, with the names changing each time.
  • 1934 — in Paramount’s It’s a Gift, W. C. Fields’s character Harold Bissonette is told “You’re drunk” and replies with a crazy version of the gag — the only form of this joke Fields is documented delivering (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • 1946, claimed — the “ugly” wording enters with the Churchill–Bessie Braddock story, sourced to bodyguard Ronald Golding and printed in Langworth’s Churchill by Himself. Langworth accepts the encounter but not its originality, calling it “Churchill editing W. C. Fields” ↗; Churchill’s daughter doubted the story.

No rights status can be asserted for this wording, because no work has ever been shown to contain it. The “ugly” version survives only as reported speech in a disputed anecdote. The passage quoted above, from Hare’s The Story of My Life (1900), is in the public domain in the United States; the nearest genuine Fields wording is dialogue in It’s a Gift (Paramount, 1934), a film that remains in copyright.

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

Where the credit goes wrong

Almost every element of the popular version is borrowed from somewhere else. Here is what belongs to whom.

Winston Churchill Disputed

The “ugly” phrasing comes from a claimed 1946 exchange with the Labour MP Bessie Braddock. It rests on the recollection of Ronald Golding, a Scotland Yard detective on Churchill’s protection detail, relayed to the editor Richard Langworth; Churchill’s daughter Lady Soames doubted it. Wikiquote lists it under Disputed ↗.

W. C. Fields Wrong words

Fields does deliver a version of the joke — but not this one. In It’s a Gift (1934) his character answers a charge of drunkenness with “Yeah, and you’re crazy, n’ I’ll be sober tomorrow n’ you’ll be crazy for the rest of your life,” as transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗. The drunk-and-ugly line appears nowhere on Wikiquote’s Fields page ↗.

Nancy Astor Swapped

Even within the Churchill telling the target is unstable: Wikiquote notes ↗ that Churchill’s interlocutor “may be given as Lady Astor rather than Braddock.”

Nobody in particular Anonymous

Quote Investigator’s chronology runs through an 1863 Ohio filler item, an 1882 House of Commons anecdote, an 1890 Broadway streetcar, an 1892 magazine sketch, and repeated Irish-MP versions in 1904, 1911 and 1932 — all before Fields or Churchill. See the full list ↗.

There is no first speaker to find. Quote Investigator’s conclusion is that the story “has been told in various permutations for more than a century” and that most of the retellings are fictional — including the ones presented as fact. Quote Investigator ↗

Context

Why this one keeps changing hands

Some quotations have an author. This one has a shape: you call me drunk, I concede it and point out that my condition is temporary while yours is permanent. Fill in the permanent defect — foolishness, hoggishness, craziness, ugliness — and fill in two names, and you have a joke that has been retold for more than a century. Quote Investigator lays out versions set in an Ohio temperance lecture, a Broadway streetcar, and repeatedly in the lobby of the House of Commons, where the participants change every decade or so.

What makes the modern form so sticky is that the last two names it landed on were unusually good ones. Churchill supplies the wit and the wartime authority; Fields supplies the drinking. Between them they cover the whole joke, which is probably why the internet cannot decide which of them to credit and frequently credits both.

The joke is older than either man. Only the casting keeps getting upgraded.

What Fields actually said — and what Churchill supposedly said

In It’s a Gift (Paramount, 1934), Fields plays a grocer named Harold Bissonette. Challenged near the end of the picture with “You’re drunk,” he answers, in Quote Investigator’s transcription, “Yeah, and you’re crazy, n’ I’ll be sober tomorrow n’ you’ll be crazy for the rest of your life.” That is a real, datable Fields performance — but the film’s screenplay is credited to Jack Cunningham, from a story credited to “Charles Bogle,” one of Fields’s pen names, so even there the authorship of the individual gag is not something the credits settle.

The Churchill version is an oral claim. Richard Langworth, the editor of Churchill by Himself, was told by Ronald Golding — a Scotland Yard detective on Churchill’s protection detail — that the exchange with Bessie Braddock happened in 1946 as Churchill left the House of Commons late one night. Churchill’s daughter Lady Soames doubted the story. Langworth himself notes that even if it happened, the retort was not original, and points at the Fields film: “Churchill editing W. C. Fields.”

Explore

Filed under

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

Character Truth Change

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 Investigator: the full chronologyquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation — every dated retelling from the 1863 Urbana Union through the 1934 Fields film and the 1946 Churchill–Braddock story.
Hare, The Story of My Life, vol. 5 (1900)archive.org

Scanned original. Page 362 carries the 16 July 1882 diary entry with the full drunk-tonight / fool-tomorrow exchange.
Wikiquote: Winston Churchill (Disputed)en.wikiquote.org

Files the Braddock exchange under Disputed, notes the 1882 antecedent, and records that the interlocutor is sometimes given as Lady Astor instead.
Langworth: “Drunk and Ugly”richardlangworth.com

The Churchill quotation editor’s account of Ronald Golding’s testimony, Lady Soames’s doubts, and his verdict: “Churchill editing W. C. Fields.”
International Churchill Society bulletinwinstonchurchill.org

The society’s own write-up of the 1946 encounter and the W. C. Fields precedent in It’s a Gift.
Wikiquote: W. C. Fieldsen.wikiquote.org

The negative check — neither Fields’s Quotes section nor his Misattributed section contains any drunk-and-ugly line.

The credited comedian

About W. C. Fields

W. C. Fields

1880–1946 · American actor, comedian, juggler & writer

Born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania, Fields worked his way from vaudeville juggling to the Ziegfeld Follies and then to Paramount, where he built the screen persona that still carries his name: the muttering, put-upon drunk with a talent for the deflating aside. He often wrote his own material, contributing story credits to his 1930s films under joke pseudonyms — Charles Bogle among them, the name on the story for It’s a Gift. That persona is exactly why lines like this one drift toward him: a boozy, contemptuous put-down sounds like something he would have said, which is a different thing from something he did say.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

How to cite this

Earliest version cited by Quote Investigator: Urbana Union (Urbana, Ohio), 1 July 1863, quote page 4 — see Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Yes, I Am Drunk, But You Are Ugly. Tomorrow I Will Be Sober, And You Will Still Be Ugly,” 17 August 2011. Earliest full dialogue readable in the original: Augustus J. C. Hare, The Story of My Life, vol. 5 (London: George Allen, 1900), 362, diary entry dated 16 July 1882.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Yes, I Am Drunk, But You Are Ugly. Tomorrow I Will Be Sober, And You Will Still Be Ugly’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/yes-i-am-drunk-but-you-are-ugly-tomorrow-i-will-be-sober/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied