George Plimpton? Vance Whitt? James Grady? Margaret Thatcher? Mel Justice? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: The repercussions of activities can be asymmetrical. For example, a chronic thief must be successful in every crime, whereas a pursuing detective must be successful only once to catch the thief and initiate legal consequences.
Also, the target of a group of assassins must be repeatedly successful in thwarting plots to survive, whereas the assassins must be successful only once.These situations inspired the following ominous warning:
We only need to be lucky one time. You need to be lucky all the time.
Would you please explore the provenance of this type of remark?
Reply from Quote Investigator: A thematic match appeared in 1939 within the “Council Bluffs Nonpareil” newspaper of Iowa. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
They know that if they are cleverer than the opposing players, in time, regardless of how the cards come out, the average will be in their favor. You may be lucky once or twice but you can’t be lucky all the time and every day of the year.
In 1970 the participatory journalist George Plimpton joined a circus as an amateur trapeze artist. Plimpton compared the luck needed when authoring books versus the luck needed when performing in a trapeze act:2
“Flying in the circus was an ideal marriage of the visual with the story. It was also the most exhilarating experience I ever had; it beat them all.”
“On a trapeze you feel like you’re hanging above an abyss. With a book you have to be lucky once in a while. With flying you have to be lucky all the time.”
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1982 a journalist in Asheville, North Carolina interviewed Vance Whitt who was the Chief Ranger for the Biltmore Estate. Whitt spoke about attempts to prevent poaching:3
Quoting a wildlife officer now deceased, Whitt said, “Poachers have to be lucky all of the time. We only have to be lucky once to catch them.”
“Generally speaking, though, even the poachers we catch know we have a job to do and we don’t have any problems.”
In 1984 James Grady published the novel “Runner in the Street” which contained a passage about people who control prostitutes:4
“They all trip themselves up,” said Ben. “It’s that one girl they abuse too much, too often, who signs papers on them. It’s that one time they sell a little smack on the side. One time we’re lucky and they’re not. But we only need to be lucky one time. Bad guys need to be lucky all the time.”
James Grady’s book was available by July 1984 because it was reviewed in the pages of “The Houston Chronicle” of Texas in that month.5
In October 1984 the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England while attempting to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The Associated Press news service reported on a message attributed to the IRA:6
“Today we were unlucky, but remember, we have only to be lucky once: You will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no war.” the statement said.
The statement was signed by P. O’Neill, a pseudonym often used by Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA.
In 1985 the “Sunday Independent” newspaper of Dublin, Ireland printed a different version of the statement:7
The British were conscious of the post-Brighton Provisional statement: “We have only to be lucky once; Thatcher must be lucky all the time.” This had made them edgy.
In 1990 a newspaper in Ahoskie, North Carolina presented the comment of police official Wesley Liverman:8
As Liverman and Sheriff Winfred Hardy waited in the courthouse for the suspects to be brought in, Liverman remarked the suspects were “after fast money. They have to be lucky all the time and we only have to be lucky one time.” He characterized the suspects as “medium to small” dealers.
In 1996 two versions of the saying were employed by Mel Justice who was a conservation officer with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources:9
“I look at this job kind of like hunting,” Mr. Justice says at 10 p.m. “Hunters only have to be lucky once, but the deer have to be lucky all the time.
“I only have to be lucky once. The outlaws have to be lucky all the time.”
In 2022 an x-tweet message noted that the message attributed to the IRA had been bizarrely reassigned to Margaret Thatcher:10
In honour of all the jubilee stuff this week, allow me to remind you of the time old people on Facebook somehow managed to think the IRA’s warning to Margaret Thatcher after failing to assassinate her in 1984 was actually an inspirational quote attributable to Thatcher herself
Accompanying the X-tweet message was a picture showing a rocky coastline and the following misquotation:
We only need to be lucky once.
You need to be lucky every time.
Margaret Thatcher
In conclusion, this type of message has been circulating for decades. Journalist George Plimpton used a partially matching version in 1970. An anonymous wildlife officer received credit for an instance in 1982. Novelist James Grady used an instance in a book that appeared by July 1984. The saying was attributed to the provisional IRA in October 1984.
Image Notes: Picture of five rolling dice from Robert Stump at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Simon Koppel, Fake History Hunter, Luther Mckinnon, Cian Maher, No Context Brits, and Captain Obvious whose discussion and inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1939 April 20, Council Bluffs Nonpareil, Voice of the People, Letter from NOT LUCKY, Quote Page 10, Column 6, Council Bluffs, Iowa. (GenealogyBank) ↩︎
- 1970 December 2, The Marion Star, Television and Radio by Cecil Smith, Quote Page 20A, Column 2 and 3, Marion, Ohio. (Note: The word “feel” was misspelled as “fell”; “exhilarating” was misspelled as “exhilerating”) (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1982 December 28, The Asheville Citizen, Ranger’s Job Unique at Biltmore Estate by Patty Waldrup (Staff Writer), Section: South, Quote Page 8, Column 3, Asheville, North Carolina. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1984 Copyright, Runner in the Street by James Grady, Chapter 21, Quote Page 133, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1984 July 15, The Houston Chronicle, The spruce goose of private eyes by Annette Hard (Houston novelist), (Book review of “Runner in the Street” by James Grady), Section: Magazine, Quote Page 16, Column 3 and 4, Houston, Texas. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1984 October 12, The Indiana Gazette, PM Thatcher escapes injury in bomb blast (Associated Press News Service), Quote Page 1, Column 5, Indiana, Pennsylvania. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1985 February 17, Sunday Independent, Fine Gael’s solid centre man by Tom O’Dea, Quote Page 4, Column 3 and 4, Dublin, Ireland. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1990 April 18, The News-Herald, 16 netted in early morning drug raids, (Continuation title: Drug), Quote Page 8A, Column 3, Ahoskie, North Carolina. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1996 March 24, Anderson Independent-Mail, Game wardens brave cold nights to nab outlaw hunters, Quote Page 1, Column 3 and 4, Anderson, South Carolina. (GenealogyBank) ↩︎
- X-Tweet, From: Cian Maher @cianmaher0, Timestamp: 7:49 AM, Jun 1, 2022, Text: In honour of all the jubilee stuff this week … (Accessed on x.com on November 25, 2025) link ↩︎