Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

No such sentence occurs in Wilde’s works: the full texts of the plays, Dorian Gray, the essays, the tales, De Profundis and Miscellanies were searched for ‘already taken’ and ‘everyone else’ with no match. Quote Investigator (2014) found the earliest exact match in an unattributed Usenet post of 27 December 1999 on a Dutch newsgroup; a Menards hardware advertising insert in American newspapers in September 2000 printed ‘Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.’ without a name; from 2001 the line was sometimes credited to one Gilbert Perreira, a claim QI could not confirm. The Wilde attribution came later and has no support: the line is absent from Ralph Keyes’s The Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde. Wikiquote lists it as misattributed. Wilde did write about being oneself, in earnest in The Soul of Man (‘Be thyself’) and De Profundis (‘Most people are other people’), but his dandies just as often praise the pose: ‘Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know’ (Dorian Gray, chapter 1).

Probably the most widely shared ‘Oscar Wilde quote’ online, on posters, mugs and in graduation speeches. It is in none of his works and was not credited to him in his lifetime or for a century after. The passage shown is a real one on the same theme, from The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891): Wilde contrasts the Delphic ‘Know thyself’ with the new world’s ‘Be thyself’, which he calls the message of Christ, as part of his argument that socialism should free each person to develop their own personality.

Be authentic, since imitating others is pointless: every other identity is already occupied. A self-help joke about individuality.

Do not cite this as Wilde. For a genuine line on the theme, use ‘Most people are other people’ (De Profundis) or ‘Be thyself’ (The Soul of Man under Socialism).

• The form on posters and social mediaBe yourself. Everyone else is taken. The Menards advertising insert of September 2000, unattributed. Where it was seen

• Thomas Merton, 1967: ‘Day of a Stranger’ (Hudson Review, summer 1967) jokes that there was very little chance of his being anybody else: the closest earlier thought Quote Investigator found, but not the same line. Source

Life, Wisdom, Self-knowledge

• Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
• Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
• To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
• Be the change you wish to see in the world. (misattributed) Mahatma Gandhi
• Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind. (misattributed) Bernard Baruch

• quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/20/be-yourself
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde (Misattributed: ‘Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Already Taken.’)

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Attributed to Oscar Wilde. No. It is not in Wilde’s works, and who first wrote it is not known. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/be-yourself-everyone-else-is-already-taken/ (checked 20 October 2026).

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