Can You Guess Which Historical Figures Said These Quotes?

Nicknamed the “father of the atomic bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer got a little cryptic when he spoke these words — originally from the mouth of Vishnu in the Hindu scripture “Bhagavad Gita” — in a 1965 TV interview discussing the aftermath of his creation.

Wayne Gretzky’s nickname “the Great One” is well earned — more than 20 years after his retirement, he still holds many NHL records. That might be because he took his own advice from this famous phrase uttered around 1990.

These famous words were spoken on September 23, 1779, when U.S. naval captain John Paul Jones engaged the Royal Navy ship Serapis. When asked for his surrender, Jones delivered this famous fiery retort that has since echoed down through the ages.

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was unerring in sher quest for equality — not just among Americans but for all peoples of the world. This lifelong mission led to her chairing a committee to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, earning her the nickname “First Lady of the World.”

One of the most consequential Presidents in American history, Abraham Lincoln uttered these words — a biblical reference mentioned throughout the New Testament — as an Illinois senatorial candidate on June 16, 1858, in what proved to be a small glimpse of his future oratorical brilliance.

At the 1851 Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, civil and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth challenged the gathered congregation to consider that Black women — both enslaved and free — deserved the same rights for which all other American women were fighting.

Although originally spoken in Latin (“Alea iacta est”), these words echoed across the Rubicon river of northern Italy as Julius Caesar and his army crossed its waters in defiance of the Roman Senate. Today, the phrase conveys the sense of passing a point of no return.

When Samuel Morse sent the first telegraph message, he opted to send something biblical: “What hath God wrought?” Alexander Graham Bell, on the other hand, uttered something a bit more utilitarian when he made the world’s first phone call to summon his assistant from an adjoining room.

The famous civil rights leader spoke these words at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, on November 17, 1957, as part of a sermon that would become known as his “Loving Your Enemies” speech.

During the first inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 4, 1933, the U.S. found itself in the devastating depths of the Great Depression. These words, a paraphrase of a sentiment written by transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau more than 80 years prior, served as a linguistic bulwark against the hard times ahead.