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Who really said it

You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants a magical solution to their problem, and everyone refuses to believe in magic

Not Lewis Carroll — actually a 2012 Once Upon a Time script Vladimir Cvetko & David H. Goodman Credited writers · “Hat Trick”, Once Upon a Time, ABC, first aired 25 March 2012
Disputed In copyright

Wikiquote files this under “Misattributed” on both Carroll’s page and the Wonderland page, and names the real source: it is spoken by Jefferson (Sebastian Stan) in “Hat Trick”, the seventeenth episode of the first season of ABC’s Once Upon a Time, first aired on 25 March 2012 and written by Vladimir Cvetko and David H. Goodman. There is a second error underneath the first: the script does not read the way the quote does. Jefferson says “some magical solution for their problem”, not “a magical solution to their problem”.

Last verified 17 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants a magical solution to their problem, and everyone refuses to believe in magic” Not Lewis Carroll. From "Hat Trick", Once Upon a Time season 1 episode 17 (ABC, 25 March 2012), written by Vladimir Cvetko and David H. Goodman. The script reads "some magical solution for their problem". Traced by Quotle.info · Verbatim: “You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants some magical solution for their problem and everyone refuses to believe in magic.”

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

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by ABC Studios). 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 Vladimir Cvetko & David H. Goodman — "Hat Trick", Once Upon a Time season 1 (ABC Studios, 2012). Theme: "You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants a magical solution to their problem, and everyone refuses to believe in magic". 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 "You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants a magical solution to their problem, and everyone refuses to believe in magic". 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 the episode actually says

Claimed source
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Actual source
Once Upon a Time, season 1, episode 17: “Hat Trick”
First aired
ABC, 25 March 2012
Written by
Vladimir Cvetko & David H. Goodman
Spoken by
Jefferson, the Mad Hatter (Sebastian Stan) — a fictional character
Occurrences in Carroll
Zero, across ten of his English books

“And storybooks are based on what? Imagination. Where does that come from? It has to come from somewhere. You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants some magical solution for their problem and everyone refuses to believe in magic.” Once Upon a Time, “Hat Trick” (2012), as transcribed on Wikiquote

Jefferson is arguing with Emma about whether storybooks are less real than history books; the famous sentence is the end of that argument, not a standalone aphorism. Note the wording: “some magical solution for their problem”, with no comma before “and”. Wikiquote’s own misattribution entry quotes the drifted version, which is a fair measure of how far the popular form has travelled.

Wikiquote: Once Upon a Time — "Hat Trick"

How we verified this

  • Carroll’s Wikiquote page ↗ lists this line under “Misattributed” and states it plainly: “Though written in contemporary idiomatic English, this has been recently cited on the Internet on various ‘quotations’ websites… as having being written by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland… It was actually a line spoken by a character named Jefferson in the TV series Once Upon a Time in a 2012 episode entitled ‘Hat Trick’.” The Wonderland page ↗ carries the same entry.
  • Wikiquote’s transcript of the series ↗ has the scene itself, under “Hat Trick [1.17]” — and that is where the second finding comes from. The transcribed line is “Everyone wants some magical solution for their problem and everyone refuses to believe in magic.” The version in circulation reads “a magical solution to their problem, and…”. Even the debunk quotes the drifted wording.
  • Wikipedia’s article on the episode ↗ supplies the credits we quote: season 1, episode 17, first aired on ABC on 25 March 2012, written by Vladimir Cvetko and David H. Goodman, directed by Ralph Hemecker, with Sebastian Stan as the Mad Hatter / Jefferson.
  • We downloaded the Project Gutenberg texts of ten of Carroll’s English books — 2.41 million characters — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ↗ (in two editions), Through the Looking-Glass ↗, The Hunting of the Snark, Phantasmagoria and Other Poems, Three Sunsets and Other Poems, Sylvie and Bruno, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, A Tangled Tale, The Game of Logic and Symbolic Logic — flattened every line break so no phrase could hide across a line ending, and searched the lot. “magical solution” and “believe in magic” each occur zero times. A site-wide insource: search of Wikiquote for “refuses to believe in magic” returns exactly three pages: Carroll’s and Wonderland’s, both listing it as a misattribution, and Once Upon a Time, where the real line is. Nothing else on the site carries it.
In copyright

In copyright. Television writing is work for hire, so the rights sit with the production company rather than the credited writers: Once Upon a Time was produced by ABC Studios and this episode first aired in 2012, well inside the term. Carroll’s books are public domain — which is why crediting a 2012 script to him quietly converts protected dialogue into free-to-print Victorian text.

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

Often misattributed

Wikiquote has already refuted the Carroll credit. The wording is the part that has not been caught.

Lewis Carroll, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Refuted

Wikiquote files it as misattributed ↗ and points to the 2012 television episode. The phrase is in none of the ten Carroll books we searched, and as Wikiquote notes, it is written in contemporary idiomatic English.

The Mad Hatter Speaker, not author

A Mad Hatter does say it — but Jefferson, Once Upon a Time’s version, played by Sebastian Stan, in the “Hat Trick” transcript ↗. Not Carroll’s Hatter, who spends his scene arguing with Time and asking riddles he cannot answer.

The popular version Wording drift

The transcript ↗ reads “some magical solution for their problem and everyone refuses”. The circulating form reads “a magical solution to their problem, and everyone refuses” — and the misattribution entry itself ↗ quotes the drifted form while correcting the author.

Accurately: a line from an ABC television script first aired in March 2012 ↗, written by Vladimir Cvetko and David H. Goodman, spoken by a Mad Hatter who is not Carroll’s — and even then, not quite in these words.

Context

Why a 2012 script reads as Victorian

Once Upon a Time built its whole premise on public-domain fairy tales, so its characters carry names readers already know. Put a speech about magic in the mouth of someone called the Mad Hatter and you have manufactured a quotation that feels sourced — the name does the work a citation would normally do, and nobody checks which Hatter.

The wording drift is the more interesting half. A line that travels by being retyped picks up small improvements: “some…for” becomes the smoother “a…to”, and a comma arrives to give the sentence a beat. By the time Wikiquote wrote its correction, the tidied version was the one everybody had, so the correction quotes it too.

The name does the work a citation would normally do, and nobody checks which Hatter.

Read the full story

In context, Jefferson is not dispensing wisdom. He is holding Emma Swan in his house and trying to force her to make a magic hat work, and the argument is his case that storybooks are no less real than history books. The famous sentence is the end of a coercive speech, which is not how it reads on a poster.

Carroll’s Hatter, for comparison, is not mystical at all. His scene is a quarrel with Time as though Time were a person he had offended at a concert, after which the clock sticks at six and it is always tea-time. That is a joke about language, not a thought about belief.

Explore

Filed under

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

Hope Doubt

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.

Wikiquote: Lewis Carroll (Misattributed)en.wikiquote.org

Files this line as misattributed and names the Once Upon a Time episode.
Wikiquote: Once Upon a Timeen.wikiquote.org

The "Hat Trick" transcript — and the script's actual wording.
Wikipedia: "Hat Trick" (Once Upon a Time)en.wikipedia.org

Air date, writing credit and cast for season 1, episode 17.
Wikiquote: Alice's Adventures in Wonderlanden.wikiquote.org

Carries the same misattribution entry on the book's own page.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (full text)gutenberg.org

The book it is credited to. No "magical solution", no "believe in magic".

The author

About the writers

Vladimir Cvetko & David H. Goodman

Credited writers · “Hat Trick”, Once Upon a Time season 1 (ABC Studios, 2012)

The episode carries a shared writing credit: Vladimir Cvetko and David H. Goodman ↗, the latter an American television writer and producer who was on Once Upon a Time as a writer and executive producer across its 2011–2018 run. A shared credit means the sentence cannot honestly be handed to one of them, so we name both, as the episode does. The director was Ralph Hemecker; the speaker on screen is Sebastian Stan.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Vladimir Cvetko and David H. Goodman, “Hat Trick,” Once Upon a Time, season 1, episode 17, directed by Ralph Hemecker, aired 25 March 2012 on ABC. Dialogue as transcribed at Wikiquote, “Once Upon a Time (TV series)”: “Everyone wants some magical solution for their problem and everyone refuses to believe in magic.”

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants a magical solution to their problem, and everyone refuses to believe in magic’?” Last verified 17 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/you-know-what-the-issue-is-with-this-world-everyone-wants-a/

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