Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.

Not Baruch’s coinage, and the full wording is not his at all. Quote Investigator’s earliest full instance of ‘Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind’ is in The Journal of the Institution of Municipal & County Engineers (London), 1 February 1938, p. 1277, in remarks by Percy Morris of Wakefield, already in quotation marks, so probably an anonymous saying by then (a Punch filler of 14 July 1855, ‘What is Matter?—Never mind. What is Mind?—No matter.’, plays on the same pair of words). In February 1946 the Empire Digest (Toronto, vol. 3, no. 5, p. 17) gave it as the reply of Sir Mark Young, Governor of Hong Kong, to a lady unhappy with her seat at a Government House luncheon; the Omaha World Herald (6 May 1946) and other papers retold that story. Baruch first gets the punchline in the Long Island Star-Journal of 9 August 1946 (Hal Eaton’s column, p. 21), with Igor Cassini asking about the seating at his soirees: ‘Those who matter, don’t mind. Those who mind—don’t matter!’ Bennett Cerf repeated the Baruch story in Shake Well Before Using (1948), p. 249, according to Wikiquote, and in 1947 a newspaper credited Baruch with a version using ‘care’. So Baruch may well have said it, but he was repeating a known quip that Sir Mark Young had been credited with a few months earlier. The longer form beginning ‘Be who you are and say what you feel’ is a later expansion: QI’s earliest instance is a student profile in The Press of Atlantic City of 25 June 2001, crediting it to Dr. Seuss, in whose books it does not occur. Neither QI nor Wikiquote cites anything by Baruch himself (speech, memoir or letter) for either form; his memoirs (1957, 1960) were not searched for this draft.

Shared on Goodreads (more than 130,000 likes) and in high school yearbooks, credited to Bernard Baruch or to Dr. Seuss. The second half is an older quip, already in quotation marks in a 1938 engineers’ journal; in 1946 it became the punchline of anecdotes about seating at dinner parties, one of them a gossip-column story in which Baruch, asked by the society columnist Igor Cassini how he managed the seating at his parties, answers with it. The opening ‘Be who you are and say what you feel’ has no known connection with Baruch.

Speak and act as yourself: the people who would object to it are not the ones whose opinion counts, and the ones whose opinion counts will not object.

The quip was a put-down: in 1938 it brushed off critics of a housing design, and from 1946 it was a host’s tart reply about seating, telling status-conscious guests that the important ones do not fuss about where they sit and the ones who fuss are not important. The modern form turns it into a self-acceptance motto and adds the call to ‘say what you feel’, which neither 1946 anecdote contains.

• ShortenedThose who matter don’t mind, and those who mind don’t matter. The older quip on its own, as Wikiquote lists it under Baruch (from Bennett Cerf, Shake Well Before Using, 1948, p. 249). In the 1946 Star-Journal anecdote: ‘Those who matter, don’t mind. Those who mind—don’t matter!’ Where it was seen
• A misquotationBe who you are and say what you feel because people who mind don’t matter and people who matter don’t mind. Credited to Dr. Seuss in a student profile, The Press of Atlantic City, 25 June 2001, p. B1, as quoted by Quote Investigator; the earliest instance of the long form QI found. Where it was seen
• The form on posters and social mediaAlways do what you want, and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind. One of the circulating forms sent to Quote Investigator, credited to Dr. Seuss. Where it was seen
• A misquotationThose who matter don’t care and those who care, don’t matter Credited to Baruch in the Trenton Evening Times, 24 August 1947, Part Two, p. 1, as quoted by Quote Investigator. Where it was seen

• Punch, 1855: A filler, ‘A Short Cut to Metaphysics’: ‘What is Matter?—Never mind. What is Mind?—No matter.’

Wisdom

• Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. (misattributed) Ralph Waldo Emerson
• To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. (misattributed) Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Why fit in when you were born to stand out? (not found) Dr. Seuss
• It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. (misattributed) Mark Twain
• Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. (not found) Oscar Wilde

• quoteinvestigator.com/2012/12/04/those-who-mind
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bernard_Baruch
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss#Misattributed
• goodreads.com/quotes/865-be-who-you-are-and-say-what-you-feel-because (credited to Bernard M. Baruch; tagged misattributed-dr-seuss)

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” Attributed to Bernard Baruch. No. It is not by Baruch; it was written by an unknown writer. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/be-who-you-are-and-say-what-you-feel/ (checked 21 October 2026).

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