The Secret Of Getting Ahead Is

This saying is widely misattributed to Twain, but no researcher has found it in his writings. The earliest known appearance is a 1923 Ohio bank advertisement — "Half the game of getting ahead is getting started" — with no attribution. Quote Investigator traces the first Twain connection to 1977, when Laurence J. Peter placed it in parentheses near an actual Twain quote in Peter's Quotations, apparently causing readers to absorb it as Twain's. The attribution is considered spurious.