Fact Check: Robin Williams didn't once say, 'A hungry stomach, an empty wallet and a broken heart can teach you the best lessons of life'
Claim:
Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams once said, "A hungry stomach, an empty wallet (or 'empty pocket') and a broken heart can teach you the best lessons of life."
Rating:
A rumor that users circulated online in April 2025 claimed Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams once said, "A hungry stomach, an empty wallet and a broken heart can teach you the best lessons of life."
For example, on April 7, a Reddit user posting on the quote-collecting subreddit r/QuotesPorn shared a meme attributing the quote to Williams.
(Melodic_Abalone_2820/Reddit)
However, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo, as well as the Google Books literary archive and the Newspapers.com newspaper-archiving website, yielded no results credibly tying the quote to Williams, who died in 2014.
In past months and years, numerous users posted the quote with Williams' name on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Threads, TikTok and X. Searches for the quote produced results at least as far back as March 1, 2018, including popular posts on the History In Pictures Facebook page and its associated Instagram and X accounts. Some posts featuring the quote included the words "empty pocket" instead of "empty wallet."
The user behind the Instagram account @robinwilliams, which appeared to likely be a fan account because it had no verification badge, also posted (archived) the quote on April 10, 2018, likely further leading users to believe the famous actor once expressed the quote. (The account's owner did not yet respond to a request for more information about the nature of the account. They listed a potentially abandoned and inactive Telegram account in their bio as their only contact method.)
Many other posts appearing before and after March 1, 2018, also simply featured the quote without attribution to Williams or anyone else.
Some users mentioned Pakistani humanitarian Abdul Sattar Edhi as a possible source for the quote, sometimes citing his 1996 book, "Abdul Sattar Edhi, an Autobiography: A Mirror to the Blind." The relevant passage (on Page 245) presented similar phrasing but did not exactly match, reading as follows (emphasis ours):
I understood that my daughter wanted her husband to measure up to me. I agreed that Altaf did not have extraordinary ambitions, but I questioned Bilquise, "What is her ambition? If she has it she should instill that in him? If she is searching for me, she will find me in a hungry stomach, in a broken heart, an empty pocket and at the doorstep of a shack."
A search of Newspapers.com yielded several results for similar quotes from past centuries. For example, on Dec. 8, 1939, Robert A. Crump with the Associated Negro Press (ANP) — a publisher in operation from 1919 through 1964 — reported a story about Black autoworkers involved in a labor dispute. Crump wrote that one unidentified man working at a Dodge plant had said, "A hungry stomach and an empty pocket with families to feed and clothe, winter coming and the Christmas holidays approaching, would cause a man to resort to almost anything."
On Feb. 14, 1935, The Northwest Enterprise, also a Black newspaper — in circulation from 1931 through 1952 and based in Seattle, Washington — featured an article reading, "A hungry stomach and an empty pocketbook may cause American to find its soul. If that is possible, let the depression continue. We prefer an empty pocket to the egotism and superiority complex with paraded in former years as Americanism."
Other search results from newspaper archives featured various sayings combining "hungry stomach" and "empty pocketbook" as far back as 1877.
Searches of Google Books also located several noteworthy quotes bearing similarities to the one shared with Williams' name.
In 1911, the Fleming H. Revell Company published Baptist preacher A.T. Robertson's book, "The Glory of the Ministry: Paul's Exultation in Preaching." Robertson wrote (on Page 228), "That is a blessed secret when the preacher learns how to carry a high head with a hungry stomach, an upright look with an empty pocket, a happy heart with an unpaid salary, joy in God when men are faithless."
Noteworthy author James Fenimore Cooper also wrote in his 1825 novel "Lionel Lincoln" (on Page 373), "An empty stomach is like an empty pocket — a place for the devil to play his gambols in."
"A. T. Robertson." The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, https://archives.sbts.edu/the-history-of-the-sbts/our-professors/a-t-robertson/.
Cooper, James Fenimore. Lionel Lincoln, Or, The Leaguer of Boston. Collier, 1901. Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=j0pAAQAAMAAJ.
Crump, Robert A. "Believe Colored Workers Used As Pawns In Strike." Atlanta Daily World, 8 Dec. 1939, p. 1, https://www.newspapers.com/article/atlanta-daily-world/169954192/.
Dailey, Haven, and Hillel Italie. "Robin Williams, Boisterous Comedy Star, Dead at 63." The Associated Press, 12 Aug. 2014, https://apnews.com/arts-and-entertainment-movies-general-news-17f71417b266474aa6b76d0cdaa4ba7b.
Edhi, Abdus Sattar. Abdul Sattar Edhi, an Autobiography: A Mirror to the Blind. National Bureau of Publications, 1996. Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=hwHlAAAAMAAJ.
"Editorials: Depression Results." The Northwest Enterprise, 14 Feb. 1935, p. 1, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-northwest-enterprise/169954530/.
Google Books. https://books.google.com/.
"Historical Newspapers from the 1700's-2000s." Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/.
Hogan, Lawrence Daniel. "Associated Negro Press." Encyclopedia of Chicago, https://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1734.html.
Robertson, A. T. The Glory of the Ministry: Paul's Exultation in Preaching. Fleming H. Revell Company, 1911. Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=f-pDAAAAYAAJ.
Washington State Library. "The Northwest Enterprise." Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093377/.
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