John Wayne? Peter McWilliams? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: The famous actor John Wayne apparently spoke about the sense of renewal we experience with each new day. Metaphorically, tomorrow arrives clean and perfect. It puts itself into our hands, and hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday. Would you please help me to find a citation and the precise phrasing of this remark?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1971 an interview with John Wayne appeared in “Playboy” magazine, and the actor discussed the importance of learning from the past. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
There’s a lot of things great about life. But I think tomorrow is the most important thing. Comes in to us at midnight very clean, ya know. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.
The “Playboy” article printed the quotation twice. A streamlined version without the phrase “ya know” appeared in the caption of a photo:2
“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes in to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.”
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1981 a collection of interviews from “Playboy” was published under the title “The Playboy Interview”. The Wayne interview was reprinted and thus achieved further distribution.3
In 1986 “Orange Coast” magazine published a quiz about quotations which included the following multiple-choice question. The answer key specified John Wayne:4
“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. It comes to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.”
A. Rev. Robert Schuller
B. John Wayne
C. Wally George
D. Pat Boone
Ini 1991 the book “Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life in School — But Didn’t” by Peter McWilliams included the quotation together with an ascription to Wayne.5
In conclusion, John Wayne deserves credit for this quotation. He employed it during an interview in 1971. Wayne’s informal phrasing is usually slightly simplified.
Image Notes: Picture of a sunrise from Dawid Zawiła at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized. Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Dan Panachyda whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1971 May, Playboy, Volume 18, Number 5, Playboy Interview: John Wayne, Start Page 75, Quote Page 92, Playboy, Chicago, Illinois. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1971 May, Playboy, Volume 18, Number 5, Playboy Interview: John Wayne, Start Page 75, Quote Page 75, Playboy, Chicago, Illinois. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1981, The Playboy Interview, Edited by G. Barry Golson, Interviewee: John Wayne, Interviewer: Richard Warren Lewis, Date: May 1971, Start Page 261, Quote Page 281, Playboy Press, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1986 January, Orange Coast Magazine, Volume 12, Number 1, Trivia: You Should Hear How They Talk by Jerry Holderman, Quote Page 109, Published by O.C.N.L, Irvine, California. (Google Books Full View link ↩︎
- 1991, Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life in School — But Didn’t by John-Roger and Peter McWilliams, Part 5: To Have Joy and To Have It More Abundantly, Chapter: Service, Quote Page 346, Prelude Press, Los Angeles, California. (Verified with scans) ↩︎