
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
The earliest citation yet found does not attribute this to Roosevelt, but presents it as a piece of anonymous piece folk-wisdom: "When one reaches the end of his rope, he should tie a knot in it and hang on" ( LIFE magazine (3 April 1919), p. 585 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89063018576?urlappend=%3Bseq=65).
Misattributed
Variant: When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
“When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.”
“If you're at the end of your rope… untie the knot in your heart.”
Source: If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow/Add One More Star to the Night
“All knots that lovers tie
Are tied to sever.
Here shall your sweetheart lie,
Untrue for ever.”
Source: More Poems
Quoted in Dionne, E. J., The Washington Post, (16 November 2004)]
When You Come Back to Me Again, written by Jenny Yates and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Scarecrow (2001)
Posthumous attributions, Tupac: Resurrection (2003)
Source: Resurrection, 1971-1996
“When I can make
Of ten small words a rope to hang the world!
"I had you and I have you now no more.”
Source: Renascence and Other Poems