Is The Charlotte Observer responsible for one of Ted Lasso’s most famous quotes?

Fans of the show “Ted Lasso” know there are a handful of quotes that Ted has uttered over the three seasons of the Apple TV+ series that stand out as inspirational or memorable or just plain marvelous.

“Be a goldfish,” soccer coach Ted tells one of his players after he makes a mistake. Ted says the goldfish is the happiest animal on the planet because it has the shortest memory.

There is the short and simple, “Believe,” that hangs on a crooked sign in the AFC Richmond locker room.

But probably the most famous Ted-ism is, “Be curious, not judgmental.”

And he might actually have The Charlotte Observer to thank for that one.

Ted shares that advice with villain Rupert Mannion in the first season, when Rupert fails to realize that Ted might have some skills at playing darts. And he attributes the quote to Walt Whitman.

Which is false.

According to the fact-checking website Snopes, Ed Folsom, a professor of English at the University of Iowa and the co-director of the Walt Whitman Archive said that Whitman never said or wrote, “Be curious, not judgmental.”

Instead, Snopes credits a 1986 column in The Charlotte Observer for the first known appearance of the quote.

Which ... might not be completely accurate, either.

While it’s true that the column appeared in the Observer on Jan. 16, 1986, it was a syndicated advice column written by Marguerite and Marshall Shearer that was distributed by Knight-Ridder, the former owner of the Observer, and ran in papers across the country. The advice was given in response to a question from a parent who found oral contraceptives in their 17-year-old daughter’s bedroom.

“Try to find out her concerns,” the columnists wrote. “Be curious, not judgmental.”

The Observer is happy to take partial credit for being the first to print the column (we’ll take Snopes’ word on that one), but it wasn’t an original Observer-ism that was unique to the paper.

Still, the advice is good: we were curious about the true origins of the quote, and aren’t judgmental if you still want to give the credit to Walt Whitman because that’s what Ted Lasso does.

After all, sometimes you just gotta ... believe.

How to watch Ted Lasso

Streaming on: Apple TV

When: New episodes are released every Wednesday. Season 3 finale airs on May 31.

This story was originally published May 17, 2023 at 5:30 AM.

Jodie Valade

The Charlotte Observer

Jodie Valade is a former Planning and Enterprise Editor at The Charlotte Observer. She has also worked at WFAE as a digital editor, and freelanced for publications such as The Athletic, The Washington Post and The New York Times. She was a longtime, award-winning sports features and enterprise reporter at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio. She also worked at The Dallas Morning News covering the Dallas Mavericks — where she became Mark Cuban’s lifelong email pen pal — and at The Kansas City Star. Support my work with a digital subscription