Will Rogers

I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like.

William Penn Adair Rogers (4 November 1879 – 15 August 1935) was an American humorist and entertainer; known primarily as Will Rogers.

Quotes

If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics ... Even the ministers are denouncing it now ... Humanity is not yet ready for either real truth or real harmony.

You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects

Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

Weekly columns

Will Rogers launched a weekly, nationally syndicated newspaper column in December 1922. The column eventually became known as the "Weekly Article" and ran in each Sunday edition. Its inclusion in the New York Times gave it a national readership.

• See they conducted experiments on convicts ... I don't know on what grounds they reason a man in jail is a bigger liar than one out of jail ... The chances are telling the truth is what got him there ... It would be a big aid to humanity, it will never be, for already the politicians are up in arms against it ... It would wreck the very foundation on which our political government is run ... If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics ... Even the ministers are denouncing it now ... Humanity is not yet ready for either real truth or real harmony.
  • Nationally syndicated column number 31, A Few Shots of Scopolamin (15 July 1923), after meeting Robert E. House, who had proposed the use of scopolamine as a truth serum, in The Use of Scopolamine in Criminology (1922).

• Well, all I know is what I read in the papers.
  • Nationally syndicated column number 42, Blames All Ills on Earthquake (1923). This became a remark Rogers often used in his public appearances.

• Papers say: "Congress is deadlocked and can't act." I think that is the greatest blessing that could befall this country.
  • Weekly Article #59, 1924-01-27

• You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
  • Nationally syndicated column number 90, From Nuts To The Soup (31 August 1924); published in The New York Times

• Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is.
  • Nationally syndicated column number 114, Monuments Are All Right But Even Heroes Must Eat (1925).

• I never met a man I didn't like.
  • Nationally syndicated column number 219, Rogers Gets Six Shiny Dimes From Oil King (1927).

• This election was lost four and five and six years ago not this year. They dident start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the dryest little spot. But he dident know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow's hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.
  • Nationally syndicated column number 518, And Here's How It All Happened (1932), as published in the Tulsa Daily World, 5 December 1932.

Daily telegrams

These short, daily columns were syndicated in 500 newspapers around the country. They were first published in the New York Times in July 1926 and continued until his death in August 1935.

• When the Judgment Day comes civilization will have an alibi, "I never took a human life, I only sold the fellow the gun to take it with."
  • Daily Telegram #926, A General Digging Out Of Old War Contracts (15 July 1929)

• Sure must be a great consolation to the poor people who lost their stock in the late crash to know that it has fallen in the hands of Mr. Rockefeller, who will take care of it and see it has a good home and never be allowed to wander around unprotected again. There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it.
  • Daily Telegram #1019, Thoughts Of Will Rogers On The Late Slumps In Stocks (31 October 1929)

• But it's just as Mr. Brisbane and I have been constantly telling you, "Don't gamble"; take all your savings and buy some good stock, and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it.
  • Daily Telegram #1019, Thoughts Of Will Rogers On The Late Slumps In Stocks (31 October 1929)

• You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
  • Daily Telegram #1063, Will Rogers Has An Idea About Disarmament Plans (22 December 1929)

• Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
  • Daily Telegram #1172, Will Rogers Sees No Value In All The Time We Save (28 April 1930)

• This would be a great world to dance in if we didn't have to pay the fiddler.
  • Daily Telegram #1224, Rogers Offers His Version Of The Economic Situation (27 June 1930)

• This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
  • Daily Telegram #1230, Congress Session, Rogers Says, Is Like Baby Getting A Hammer (4 July 1930)

• We are the first nation to starve to death in a storehouse that's overfilled with everything we want.
  • Daily Telegram #1355, The First Good News of the 1928 Campaign! Mr. Rogers Says He Will Not Run For Anything (26 November 1930)

• I certainly know that [A] comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious and I don't want either of those to happen to me til I am dead (if then).
  • Daily Telegram #1538, The First Good News of the 1928 Campaign! Mr. Rogers Says He Will Not Run For Anything (28 June 1931)

I not only "don't choose to run" but I don't even want to leave a loophole in case I am drafted, so I won't "choose". I will say "won't run" no matter how bad the country will need a comedian by that time.

• I not only "don't choose to run" but I don't even want to leave a loophole in case I am drafted, so I won't "choose". I will say "won't run" no matter how bad the country will need a comedian by that time.
  • Daily Telegram #1538, The First Good News of the 1928 Campaign! Mr. Rogers Says He Will Not Run For Anything (28 June 1931)

• Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with.
  • Daily Telegram #1538, The First Good News of the 1928 Campaign! Mr. Rogers Says He Will Not Run For Anything (28 June 1931)

• The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That's one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.
  • Daily Telegram #1597, Will Rogers Finds Larnin' Spoils One For Real Work (4 September 1931)

• This would be a great time in the world for some man to come along that knew something.
  • Daily Telegram #1611, Mr. Rogers Thinks Its Time That A Smart Man Came Along (21 September 1931)

• I am a peace man. I haven't got any use for wars and there is no more humor in 'em than there is reason for 'em.
  • Daily Telegram (4 December 1931), as quoted in Will Rogers' Daily Telegrams (1979), p. 104; also in Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (1995) edited by Bryan B. Sterling and ‎Frances N. Sterling, p. 304

• I doubt if a charging elephant, or a rhino, is as determined, or hard to check, as a socially ambitious mother.
  • Daily Telegram #1808, Mr. Rogers' Heart Goes Out To Our Envoy To St. James's (10 May 1932) in The New York Times, 11 May 1932

• This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.
  • Daily Telegram #1948, Will Rogers Favors Closing the Campaign Right Now and Letting The Boys Go Fishing (1 November 1932)

• I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody a chance to get sore at everybody else. Sometimes it takes two or three conferences to scare up a war, but generally one will do it.
  • Daily Telegram number 2159, Mr. Rogers Has An Idea How Conferences End (5 July 1933)

• There ain't nothing that breaks up homes, country, and nations like somebody publishing their memoirs.
  • Daily Telegram number 2615, Mr. Rogers Finds the Wars At Home and Afar Alike (23 December 1934) in The New York Times, 24 December 1934

• Our constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U. S. Senators. There ought to be one day (just one) when there is open season on senators.
  • Daily Telegram number 2678, Mr. Rogers Takes Notice Of The Senatorial Storm (6 March 1935)

• We don't know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it.
  • Daily Telegram number 2768, Mr. Rogers Puts Us Down As A Nation of Fleas (19 June 1935)

As quoted in ...

• No party is as bad as its state and national leaders.
  • "I Accept the Nomination", Life magazine, 31 May 1928[1]

• advertising [...] makes you spend money you haven't got for things you don't want.

• As the Connecticut Yankee Hank Morgan / Sir Boss in the 1931 film A Connecticut Yankee (after Mark Twain). Cf. Ivan G. Shreve Jr: Thrilling days of yesteryear blogspot.de/2009/09. Also quoted in Printers' Ink magazine, volume 156, issue 1 (1931), p. 3 books.google and Advertising Outdoors Vol. 2, No. 8 (August 1931), p. 19, [2] = [3]

• The United States never lost a war or won a conference.
  • Remark after the Versailles Peace Conference, as quoted in Wit and Wisdom (1936) edited by Jack Lait

• When you get into trouble 5,000 miles from home, you've got to have been looking for it.
  • As quoted in Sanity Is Where You Find It : An affectionate history of the United States in the 20's and 30's (1955) edited by Donald Day.

• The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.
  • As quoted in The New Speaker's Treasury of Wit and Wisdom (1958) by Herbert Victor Prochnow, p. 190

• The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
  • As quoted in The Image : A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1963) by Daniel Joseph Boorstein

• We all can't be heroes, for someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
  • As quoted in The Complete Speaker's Index to Selected Stories for Every Occasion (1967) by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 16
  • Variant: We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
    • As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 240

• Personally, I have always felt the best doctor in the world is the veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what is the matter — he's got to just know.
  • As quoted in Ether and me; or "Just relax." (1973)

• An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh.
  • As quoted in You Must Remember This (1975) by Walter Wagner, p. 175

We are here just for a spell and then pass on. So get a few laughs and do the best you can. Live your life so that whenever you lose it, you are ahead.

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

• An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.
  • As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 258

• We are here just for a spell and then pass on. So get a few laughs and do the best you can. Live your life so that whenever you lose it, you are ahead.
  • Inscribed on the Will Rogers Memorial Building in Claremore, Oklahoma.
  • Variants: We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.
    • As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 285
  • We are all here for a short spell; so get all the good laughs you can.
    • As quoted in Civilization's Quotations : Life's Ideal (2002) by Richard Alan Krieger, p. 69

• There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. QOTD 2007·11·04 Sound file
  • As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 524

• Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff.
  • As quoted in Land in America : Its Value, Use, and Control (1981) by Peter M. Wolf, p. 6
  • Unsourced variant: Buy land, they aren't making any more of it.

• Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?
  • As quoted in Dreams Come Due : Government and Economics as If Freedom Mattered (1986) by John Galt, p. 235

• What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.
  • As quoted in Creative Leadership : Mining the Gold in Your Workforce (1998) by A. S. Migs Damiani, p. 168

• Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
  • As quoted in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1998) by Connie Robertson

• Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
  • As quoted in Wit (2003) by Des MacHale, p. 299

• The rest of the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but Congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the President has to tell 'em.
  • As quoted in Defending Liars : In Defense of President Bush and the War on Terror in Iraq (2006) by Howard L. Salter, p. 40

• Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat.
  • As quoted in The Quotable Will Rogers (2006) by Joseph H. Carter

• The only problem with Boy Scouts is, there aren't enough of them.
  • As quoted in Giving young people a chance to grow (22 Nov 2011)

The Illiterate Digest (1924)

I tell you Folks, all Politics is Apple Sauce.

A man that don't love a Horse, there is something the matter with him. If he has no sympathy for the man that does love Horses, then there is something worse the matter with him.

• The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.
  • "Breaking into the Writing Game"

• I tell you Folks, all Politics is Apple Sauce.

• The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make one out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a Crook or a Martyr.
  • "Helping the Girls with their Income Taxes"

• Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else.
• Now everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor, and if it keeps on happening, why the entire laughter kinder Fades out of it.
  • "Warning to Jokers: Lay off the Prince"

• I have no Politics. I am for the Party that is out of Power, no matter which one it is. But I will give you my word that, in case of my appointment, I will not be a Republican; I will do my best to pull with you, and not embarrass you. In fact, my views on European affairs are so in accord with you, Mr. President, that I might almost be suspected of being a Democrat.
  • Humorous letter to Republican US President Warren Harding, facetiously offering to replace the American ambassador to the Court of St. James in England.

• The American people are a very generous people and will forgive almost any weakness, with the possible exception of stupidity.

• Every Gag I tell must be based on truth. No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of Truth. ... Now Rumor travels Faster, but it don't stay put as long as Truth.
  • "Politics Getting Ready to Jell"

• We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
  • "The World Tomorrow" After the Manner of Great Journalists

• A man that don't love a Horse, there is something the matter with him. If he has no sympathy for the man that does love Horses, then there is something worse the matter with him.
  • "A Skinny Dakota Kid Who Made Good"

Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom (1935)

Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom (1935) by P. J. O'Brien

The thing about my jokes is that they don't hurt anybody. You can say they're not funny or they're terrible or they're good or whatever it is, but they don't do no harm. But with Congress — every time they make a joke it's a law. And every time they make a law it's a joke.

• So when all the yielding and objections is over, the other Senator said, "I object to the remarks of a professional joker being put into the Congressional Record." Taking a dig at me, see? They didn't want any outside fellow contributing. Well, he had me wrong. Compared to them I'm an amateur, and the thing about my jokes is that they don't hurt anybody. You can say they're not funny or they're terrible or they're good or whatever it is, but they don't do no harm. But with Congress — every time they make a joke it's a law. And every time they make a law it's a joke.
  • Ch. 9

• I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat.
  • Ch. 9 "Rogers was a lifelong Democrat but he studiously avoided partisanship. He contributed to the Democratic campaign funds, but at the same time he frequently appeared on benefit programs to raise money for the Republican treasury. Republican leaders sought his counsel in their campaigns as often as did the Democrats." ~ P. J. O'Brien
  • Variants: I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat.
    I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.

• There is no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I don't even have to exaggerate.
  • Variant: People often ask me, 'Will, where do you get your jokes?' I just tell 'em, 'Well, I watch the government and report the facts, that is all I do, and I don't even find it necessary to exaggerate.
  • Variant: I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
    • As quoted in Saturday Review (25 August 1962)

The Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949)

• There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education.

• Communism is like prohibition, it's a good idea but it won't work.

• You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.

• When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do — well, that's Memoirs.

The Will Rogers Book (1972)

Written by Paula McSpadden Love, a niece of Will Rogers's and curator of the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma.

• Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.

• When I die, my epitaph or whatever you call those signs on gravestones is going to read: "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like." I am so proud of that I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come to my grave you will find me sitting there, proudly reading it.
  • "One of his most famous and most quoted remarks. First printed in the Boston Globe, June 16, 1930, after he had attended Tremont Temple Baptist Church, where Dr. James W. Brougher was minister. He asked Will to say a few words after the sermon. The papers were quick to pick up the remark, and it stayed with him the rest of his life. He also said it on various other occasions" ~ Paula McSpadden Love
    • Variant: I joked about every prominent man in my lifetime, but I never met one I didn't like.
    • John D. [Rockefeller] sure carried out my old saying, "I never met a man I didn't like." Nationally syndicated column number 219, Rogers Gets Six Shiny Dimes From Oil King (1927).
    • The earliest dated citation of such a remark thus far found in research for Wikiquote is the one from 1926 about Leon Trotsky from the Saturday Evening Post (6 November 1926).

• I originated a remark many years ago that I think has been copied more than any little thing that I've every said, and I used it in the FOLLIES of 1922. I said America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference in our lives. I believe that we could without any degree of egotism, single-handed lick any nation in the world. But we can't confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on.

Other

These quotations do not appear in the Will Rogers Weekly Articles or Daily Telegrams series of books published by the Oklahoma State University Press.

• I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I dident like. When you meet people, no matter what opinion you might have formed about them beforehand, why, after you meet them and see their angle and their personality, why, you can see a lot of good in all of them.
  • On Leon Trotsky Saturday Evening Post (6 November 1926) - note that Rogers specifically spelled the word "dident"

• We can make this thing into a Party, instead of a Memory.
  • Letter to Al Smith regarding the Democratic party (19 January 1929)

• We'll hold the distinction of being the only Nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile. Radio broadcast, Bacon, Beans, and Limousines, October 18, 1931 Bacons, Beans, and Limousines on YouTube

• • Quoted as 'We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poor house in an automobile.'in How We Elect Our Presidents (1952), edited by Donald Day, p. 111

• And kid Congress and the Senate, don't scold 'em. They are just children thats never grown up. They don't like to be corrected in company. Don't send messages to 'em, send candy.
  • Advice sent to President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt (2 December 1932)

• You've got to be optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humorist to stay one.
  • Good Gulf radio show (24 June 1934)

• You've never in your life seen a picture, I bet any one of you, never seen a picture of one of these old Pilgrims praying when they didn't have a gun right by the side of them. That was to see that he got what he was praying for.
  • radio broadcast (14 April 1935)

• That's one thing about Republican Presidents. They never went in much for plans. They only had one plan. It says "Boys, my head is turned. Just get it while you can."
  • radio broadcast (21 April 1935)

Misattributed

• I am not so much concerned with the return on capital as I am with the return of capital.
  • The Prudent Professor: Planning and Saving for a Worry-Free Retirement (2011) by Edwin M. Bridges, Brian D. Bridges;
  • Forbes Guide to the Markets: Becoming a Savvy Investor (2009) by Forbes, LLC, Marc M. Groz
  • The National Underwriter, Volume 45 (1941), p. 12: "As Eddie Cantor put it years ago, after getting burned in the stock market, the life insurance policyholder is more interested in the return of his money than in the return on it."

• Diplomacy is the art of being able to say "nice doggie" until you have time to pick up a rock!
  • Quote given unattributed in a 1953 issue of the Tennessee conservationist
• Diplomacy is the same as saying "nice doggie" until you have a chance to pick up a rock.
  • Attributed to Francis Rodman, in volume 64 of The Reader's digest (1954)
  • Other variants also attributed to Wynn Catlin in Kiss Me Hardy: Quotations Ancient and (Very) Modern (1982) by Roger Kilroy; and to Winston Churchill by Dick Applegate in a speech reprinted in Volume 75 of "The Carpenter" (1955)

• Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.

• You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

Quotes about Rogers

One of the best-known and one of the least-known men in the world. By inclination, a great mixer. By instinct, a hermit. ~ Spencer Tracy

• Another popular humorist of the day was Will Rogers, who used to do an act where he'd twirl a lasso and absolutely slay his audiences with such wry observations as: "The only thing I know is what I read in the papers." Ha-ha! Get it? Neither do we. Must have been something he did with the lasso.
  • Dave Barry, Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States (1989), p. 105

• America has never produced anybody quite like him, and there has rarely been an American humorist whose words produced less empty laughter or more sober thought. His interviews with Mussolini and Primo de Rivera help to bear out his contention that European disarmament is a farce, and that the League of Nations is a piece of eyewash designed by some of the big powers to manipulate affairs to their own advantage. Perhaps Will Rogers has done more to educate the American public in world affairs than all the professors who have been elucidating the continental chaos since the Treaty of Versailles.
  • John Carter, in The New York Times (31 October 1926); also quoted in Will Rogers : A Biography (1962) by Donald Day, Ch. 20, p. 195

• He helped steady millions of drifting people, not only financially through his charity campaigns and his own large personal gifts which he always tried to hide from public knowledge, but mentally and morally as well through the ability to lift people, guide them, make them laugh, and then make them think. Presidents, cowboys, financiers, kings, show people, children- he knew and liked them all and all were genuinely sorry when he died. I think- because of this personal trait which Lincoln had- that Will Rogers is one of the very greatest men who ever lived.
  • Harold Keith, Will Rogers, A Boy's Life (Norman: Levite of Apache, 1991), revised 1991 republication of 1937 original, foreword

• From his earliest childhood Will Rogers had strongly defined characteristics. He was by nature affectionate and fun-loving and, though he loved to tease and play pranks on his friends, there was no malice in him. Underneath his love of fun and his careless ways, there was a great sensitiveness which, in his early years at least, sometimes caused him unhappiness. But he was quick to forgive those who hurt him as he was to ask forgiveness when he himself was in the wrong, and this, as well as many other lovable traits, made Will Rogers a great favorite among his classmates at Willie Halsell.
  • Harold Keith, Will Rogers, A Boy's Life (Norman: Levite of Apache, 1991), revised 1991 republication of 1937 original, p. 78-79

• Although honors were thrust upon Will Rogers thick and fast, he always had the good judgment to refuse those he felt he had no business accepting. In 1938, a presidential boom for which he was in no way responsible, arose. The Rogers County Democratic convention started it and soon it had spread everywhere. But Will himself quickly blocked it. "I certainly know that a comedian can last only till he either takes himself seriously or his audience takes him seriously," he said, "and I don't want either one of those to happen to me till I'm read- if then. So let's stop all this foolishness right now." Another time he was offered an honorary degree by the Oklahoma City University, but he refused it. "This honorary degree thing is hooey," he said. "I got too much respect for people who work and earn 'em to see 'em handed around to every notorious character." His unusual stand was praised by newspapers and magazines everywhere.
  • Harold Keith, Will Rogers, A Boy's Life (Norman: Levite of Apache, 1991), revised 1991 republication of 1937 original, p. 251-252

• As Will Rogers' popularity and earning capacity increased, his contributions to charities, both public and private, increased also. Although it is hard to obtain information on this phase of his life, because of his quietness and secrecy about it, it is known that he gave hundreds to newsboys' homes, maternity homes, hospitals for crippled children, and other institutions like nature. During the World War he gave hundreds of dollars to the Red Cross each month, and later, in 1927, he was made a life member of this organization, a distinction of which he was very proud, for he loved the Red Cross and the work it was doing.
  Eddie Cantor, the actor, once declared: "Will Rogers had Carnegie and both the Rockefellers backed off the boards in comparison. He is always giving and never telling. How much he gives away only Bill himself really can tell- and I doubt that he keeps any books on it. But I'm a poor guesser if it is less than fifty thousand dollars a year. And he'll up and deny it right, left and center, if you accuse him of it."
  • Harold Keith, Will Rogers, A Boy's Life (Norman: Levite of Apache, 1991), revised 1991 republication of 1937 original, p. 252-253

• In addition to my deep appreciation of his humor the first time that I fully realized Will Rogers' exceptional and deep understanding of political and social problems was when he came home from his European trip in 1926. While I had discussed European matters with many others, both American and foreign, Will Rogers' analysis of affairs abroad was not only more interesting but proved to be more accurate than any other I had heard.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, as quoted in Will Rogers : A Biography (1962) by Donald Day, Ch. 20, p. 195

• Will Rogers was America's most complete human document. He reflected in many ways the heartbeat of America. In thought and manner of appearance and in his daily life he was probably our most typical native born, the closest living approach to what we like to call the true American.
  • Damon Runyon, as quoted in Will Rogers : A Biography (1962) by Donald Day

• There is a curious parallel between Will Rogers and Abraham Lincoln. They were rare figures whom we could call beloved with ease and without embarrassment.
  • Carl Sandburg, shortly after Roger's death, as quoted in Will Rogers : A Biography (1962) by Donald Day

• The impact upon the people of America at the death of Will Rogers was similar to that produced by the death of Abraham Lincoln.
  • Robert Sherwood, as quoted in Will Rogers : A Biography (1962) by Donald Day

• One of the best-known and one of the least-known men in the world. By inclination, a great mixer. By instinct, a hermit.
  • Spencer Tracy, as quoted in "What others said" at Tulsa World

External links

• Will Rogers Memorial Museums
• Will Rogers Estate - Quotes pages
• Will Rogers Tribute site
• Will Rogers, Radical