Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Already Taken

Oscar Wilde? Menards? America Ferrera? Apocryphal? Anonymous?

Dear Quote Investigator: I have spent hours trying to determine whether Oscar Wilde wrote the following as commonly claimed:

Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Already Taken.

I have not found a single good citation. What do you think?

Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Oscar Wilde made this remark. It is not listed in “The Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde”, an extensive collection compiled by quotation expert Ralph Keyes. ¹

The earliest instance of the saying located by QI was printed in September 2000 in a multi-page newspaper advertising supplement for a chain of stores in the Midwest called Menards. At the bottom of some pages inspirational sayings were printed; for example, these three statements were displayed:

People who do things that count, never stop to count them.
Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.
Try not to become a person of success but rather a person of value.

No ascriptions were provided for these adages. This advertising insert was placed in newspapers in a variety of geographical areas, e.g., Ironwood, Michigan, ² Cedar Rapids, Iowa, ³ and Aberdeen, South Dakota. ⁴

Oscar Wilde did write several remarks about identity and appearance that were thematically related to this quotation, but the perspective was different.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In 1882 Oscar Wilde wrote an introduction to a collection of verse and while discussing principles of aesthetics he broached the topic of “one’s real life”. Boldface has been added: ⁵

In some such way as this we could gather up these strewn and scattered petals of song into one perfect rose of life, and yet, perhaps, in so doing, we might be missing the true quality of the poems; one’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead; and beautiful poems, like threads of beautiful silks, may be woven into many patterns and to suit many designs, all wonderful and all different…

In July 1890 Oscar Wilde published “The Picture of Dorian Gray” in “Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine”. The central thesis of the novel was the disjunction between the outward appearance of an individual and his or her internal thoughts and feelings. During one scene the character Basil Hallward criticized his friend Lord Henry who responded with humor: ⁶

“You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.”
“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,” cried Lord Henry, laughing.

The phrase “be yourself” in the quotation under investigation is comparable to “being natural”, and here Wilde playfully reversed the conventional notion.

In September 1890 an essay by Wilde titled “The True Function and Value of Criticism” was published in the London periodical “The Nineteenth Century”. Wilde suggested there was a complex relationship between masks and candor: ⁷

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

In 1891 Wilde published an extensively revised version of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” that included some new chapters. The following passage is from the new chapter fifteen during which Dorian Gray attended a party: ⁸

Perhaps one never seems so much at one’s ease as when one has to play a part. Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age.

Oscar Wilde’s play “An Ideal Husband” was first performed in 1895. In one scene the character Sir Robert Chiltern asked Mrs. Cheveley whether she was an optimist or pessimist. She replied that she was neither and that both stances were merely poses. Chiltern continued with another question: ⁹

Sir Robert Chiltern: You prefer to be natural?
Mrs Cheveley: Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

Wilde revisited the theme of authentic identity in the epistolary work “De Profundis” which he composed while in prison and which was published in 1905 after his death in 1900: ¹⁰

It is tragic how few people ever “possess their souls” before they die. “Nothing is more rare in any man,” says Emerson, “than an act of his own.” It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are some one else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

In September 2000 the saying under exploration was printed without attribution in a set of newspaper advertisements as noted previously:

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

In 2002 an article published in a Fort Wayne, Indiana weekly newspaper presented the following version: ¹¹

Do not dress to look like or try to be someone else. Be yourself (everyone else is taken anyway). Be comfortable and breathe. Choose what suits you.

In 2008 a newspaper in Tucson, Arizona wrote about a set of doodles that were created and donated by celebrities. The drawings were sold in a charity auction event designed to raise money for an elementary school: ¹²

Current doodles include ones done by Al Pacino; “Ugly Betty” star America Ferrera, who wrote, “Be Yourself, Everyone Else Is Taken”; and a drawing of the New York City skyline done by Donald Trump.

In 2009 an article syndicated by Newstex about building a personal brand discussed the blog of consultant Dan Schawbel who employed an extended version of the expression: ¹³

And my favorite section of the blog is his tab called “Quote Me” where he lists some of his favorite things to say like “Be the real you because everyone else is taken and replicas don’t sell for as much.”

In conclusion, the earliest instance of this saying known to QI appeared remarkably recently, i.e., in 2000, and no attribution was given. The ascription to Oscar Wilde has no substantive support, but Wilde did generate some interesting remarks in this topic area.

Image Notes: Identity-Face image from geralt on Pixabay. Oscar Wilde portrait in 1882 is from Wikimedia and is in the public domain.

(Great thanks to Sydney Sprague whose email query led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Thanks also to Benjamin Dreyer who tweeted two months ago that the quotation was not crafted by Oscar Wilde. Special thanks Terri Guillemets, creator of “The Quote Garden”, who listed several quotes by Oscar Wilde in a section called “Quotes about Being Yourself”. Additional thanks to Michelle Lara Lin of the “Quotesome Blog” for her analysis. Further thanks to thenostromo, an Administrator at “QuoteLand”, for his analysis.)

Update: On January 20, 2014 the 1882 citation was added.