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Daily Inspiration Quote by Davy Crockett

"Be always sure you are right - then go ahead"

About this Quote

The line sounds like frontier bravado, but its real trick is how it smuggles caution inside a rallying cry. "Go ahead" is pure motion, the cultural engine of expansion-era America: act, push, claim, decide. Yet Crockett welds that kinetic impulse to a nagging qualifier: "Be always sure you are right". The sentence flatters the listener into imagining they can be certain, then dares them to move only under that banner. It’s a self-authorizing ethic: confidence becomes both the prerequisite and the proof.

That’s the subtext that fits Crockett’s world. On the frontier, hesitation could be costly, but certainty was often a performance as much as a fact. The line reads like advice to a young republic that wanted to see itself as principled even while it was improvising law, borders, and identity in real time. "Right" is doing double duty: morally right and strategically correct. The ambiguity is the point. It lets the speaker claim virtue while endorsing action that may later look ruthless.

Crockett, a politician as well as an explorer, also understands the appeal of simple rules in complicated circumstances. The quote offers a clean algorithm for messy decisions: don’t get bogged down in doubt; convert doubt into certainty, then act. It’s persuasive because it grants you both conscience and momentum - a frontier-friendly blend of righteousness and forward motion that still echoes in American self-mythology.

Quote Details

TopicDecision-Making
Source
Verified source: A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, of the State o... (Davy Crockett, 1834)
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Cross-Reference
Evidence:
I leave this rule for others when I'm dead Be always sure you're right , THEN GO AHEAD! (Title page (personal motto)). This wording is cited by multiple references as Crockett’s personal motto appearing on the title page of his 1834 autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, of the State of Tennessee. The commonly circulated modern form (“Be always sure you are right - then go ahead”) is a normalized variant; the earliest form I could specifically verify in secondary transcriptions uses “you’re” and includes the preceding line (“I leave this rule for others when I'm dead”). A later (non-primary) but historically relevant channel for popularizing the motto was the Crockett almanac series (published 1835–1856), though those were not authored by Crockett. I was not able to directly open the scanned 1834 title page image within this browsing session to lock down a scan-based page identifier beyond 'title page.'
Other candidates (1)
Brave Bright Feathers (Lucille Marano, 2022) compilation95.0%
... Davy , Leon , J. J. Ralph Waldo Emerson , George Eastman , John Quincy Adams , and Walter Penn . " Davy Crockett ...
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Crockett, Davy. (2026, February 11). Be always sure you are right - then go ahead. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/be-always-sure-you-are-right-then-go-ahead-18973/

Chicago Style
Crockett, Davy. "Be always sure you are right - then go ahead." FixQuotes. February 11, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/be-always-sure-you-are-right-then-go-ahead-18973/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Be always sure you are right - then go ahead." FixQuotes, 11 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/be-always-sure-you-are-right-then-go-ahead-18973/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Be Always Sure You Are Right - Then Go Ahead - Davy Crockett
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About the Author

Davy Crockett

Davy Crockett (August 17, 1786 - March 6, 1836) was a Explorer from USA.

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