When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on (Quotation)

Quotation: "When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on."

Variations:

1. "If you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on."
2. "When get to the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on."
3. "When you think you have reached the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."

Sources consulted:

1. Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition
2. Retirement Papers
3. Ford Edition
4. Lipscomb-Bergh Edition (via Google Books)

Earliest known appearance in print: 1923^[1]

Earliest known appearance in print, attributed to Thomas Jefferson: 1996^[2]

Other attributions:

1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Benjamin Franklin

Status: This quotation has never been found in the writings of Thomas Jefferson. It is listed as a proverb from the American West in a 1946 article in California Folklore Quarterly.^[3]

Footnotes

1. ↑ The School Executive 42(1923): [n.p.].
2. ↑ Patrick Regan and Mary Engelbreit, Mary Engelbreit: The Art and Artist (Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews McMeel, 1996), 31.
3. ↑ Pearce, T.M., "The English Proverb in New Mexico," California Folklore Quarterly 5, no. 4 (1946): 354.