It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

The earliest known form is by Arthur G. Lewis, in his column ‘Stub Ends of Thoughts’ in the Book of the Royal Blue, a magazine for passengers of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, in April 1911: ‘It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that wins.’ Quote Investigator tentatively credits him; The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs also gives it as the earliest occurrence. It spread as an anonymous American proverb; President Eisenhower used it in 1958. The first credit to Twain found is an epigraph in The Olympian (Olympia, Washington) of 1 July 1991. Matt Seybold of the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College also rejects the attribution.

A favourite of coaches and motivational posters, credited to Twain since the 1990s. Not in any of the fifteen Twain texts in the sources. The dog maxim he did write, in Pudd’nhead Wilson, is about gratitude, not fight.

Determination counts for more than size or strength.

• A misquotationWhat counts is not the size of the dog in the fight—it’s the size of the fight in the dog. Dwight D. Eisenhower, remarks at a Republican National Committee breakfast, 31 January 1958.

Courage, Wisdom

• If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
• Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. (misattributed) Ralph Waldo Emerson
• 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
• So live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts (misattributed) Marcus Tullius Cicero
• The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. (misattributed) Epicurus

• quoteinvestigator.com/2022/09/20/size-dog
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” Attributed to Mark Twain. No. The earliest known form is Arthur G. Lewis’s, in a railway magazine column of 1911, and it spread as an anonymous proverb. It is not Twain’s. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/size-of-the-fight-in-the-dog/ (checked 21 October 2026).

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