You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself
Not Eleanor Roosevelt — an anonymous sayingAnonymousFirst close match in print, 1932 · originator unidentified
?Attribution status: Disputed — the saying predates the Roosevelt credit by decades and no source ties it to her.?Reuse status: Rights unconfirmed
Quote Investigator traces the first close match to the 1932 book Human Engineering, where the line is put in the mouth of an unnamed foreman addressing a young worker called William. Eleanor Roosevelt’s name was not attached to it in the record QI assembled until a newspaper item in 2000 — long after the saying was circulating as anonymous folk wisdom.
“You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself” Anonymous — earliest close match in Harry Myers and Mason M. Roberts, "Human Engineering" (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932), where it is spoken by an unnamed foreman. Frequently misattributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, who is not credited with it in print until 2000. Via Quotle.info.
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Eleanor Roosevelt. Use the credit shown above instead.
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? 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.
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In context
Evoking the themes of wisdom, failure and knowledge. Theme: "You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself". 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
Where the line actually first appears
Earliest close match
Human Engineering
Published
Harper & Brothers, New York, 1932
Credited there to
An unnamed foreman, speaking to a young worker called William
Attributed to Roosevelt
Not until 2000 in the record assembled by Quote Investigator
William, you must learn from the mistakes of others—you will never live long enough to make them all yourself.
Anonymous, 1932
As transcribed by Quote Investigator from the 1932 book Human Engineering. The familiar modern form — “you can’t live long enough” — appears in newspapers from the 1940s; the “can’t possibly” variant is a later smoothing of the same sentence.
Quote Investigator ↗ identifies the first close match in the 1932 book Human Engineering by Harry Myers and Mason M. Roberts, where a foreman tells a worker named William the line.
The book itself is catalogued at Open Library ↗ as Human Engineering, Harry Myers, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1932, 318 pages, LCCN 32026248.
No rights status can honestly be asserted for this wording. The saying is an evolved, anonymous one with no identified author, so there is no rights holder to name — and the earliest book to carry the close match, Human Engineering, was published in 1932, which in the United States is past the automatic public-domain cutoff (currently 1930); whether it is still in copyright depends on a 28th-year renewal we have not verified. Quotle.info therefore treats the status as undetermined and quotes only the short passage under discussion.
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.
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Fact-check
Everyone has been given credit for this one
The saying has been reassigned repeatedly. Quote Investigator’s chronology shows each of these names attaching to it after the line was already circulating in print.
✕
quoteEleanor Roosevelt Most common today
Quote Investigator’s earliest Roosevelt citation is an item in the Albany Democrat-Herald in 2000; Wikiquote lists it under Disputed ↗, noting it was cited as anonymous folk-wisdom from the 1940s onward and not attributed to her until 2001.
The saying has the shape of workplace advice because that is where it seems to have lived first. Quote Investigator’s chronology runs through trade and small-town papers — a 1902 item in the Topeka State Journal, a 1905 piece in the Falls City Tribune, a 1920 appearance in American Machinist that already uses the distinctive tail “making them all yourself” — before the fully modern sentence surfaces in the 1932 book Human Engineering.
Because it was nobody’s in particular, it became everybody’s. QI records the line being handed to Martin Vanbee in 1951, to Admiral Hyman Rickover after a 1983 speech, to Sam Levenson in 1995, to Eleanor Roosevelt in 2000 and to Oliver Wendell Holmes in 2012 — each credit landing well after the saying was already in circulation.
An anonymous foreman’s line, reassigned to a new celebrity roughly once a decade.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote prolifically — the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project counts roughly 8,000 “My Day” newspaper columns, 27 books and 1,000 speeches among her output — which is precisely why unattributed aphorisms drift toward her name. This particular saying is not among her documented writings. It was already in print as anonymous shop-floor wisdom while she was in the White House, and the credit to her surfaces only around the turn of the twenty-first century.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented close match
Harry Myers and Mason M. Roberts, Human Engineering (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932); identified as the first close match in Quote Investigator, "Quote Origin: You Must Learn from the Mistakes of Others. You Will Never Live Long Enough to Make Them All Yourself," 18 September 2018.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself’?” Last verified 22 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/you-must-learn-from-the-mistakes-of-others-you-cant/