Famous Last Words
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99 free Famous Last Words trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
15 free Famous Last Words trivia questions with answers. Challenge yourself with our Famous Last Words trivia quiz featuring 15 thought-provoking questions about the final words spoken by historical figures, celebrities, and notable personalities. From profound statements to unexpected remarks, these last words have left lasting impressions on history. See how many you can answer correctly!
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Q 01Which French queen, guillotined in October 1793, apologised to her executioner for stepping on his foot at the scaffold?
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette: 'Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès', 'I did not do it on purpose', nine months after her husband Louis XVI went to the same blade. Good manners to the last.
Q 02Which wartime British Prime Minister is said to have declared 'I'm bored with it all' shortly before his death?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill, a towering figure of the 20th century, reportedly uttered these words in January 1965, expressing his weariness in his final moments.
Q 03Which Irish wit reportedly said near death, 'My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death'?
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde, weeks before he died at the Hôtel d'Alsace in Paris on 30 November 1900; the popular short version is 'Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.'
Q 04Which Communist Manifesto author said 'Last words are for fools who haven't said enough'?
Karl Marx
Karl Marx, to his housekeeper on the day he died, 14 March 1883, prefaced with 'Go on, get out!'
Q 05Which Spanish surrealist reportedly asked 'Where is my clock?' just before his death?
Salvador Dalí
While the precise authenticity of Salvador Dalí's last words is debated, 'Where is my clock?' is a widely attributed and fitting anecdote for the artist known for 'The Persistence of Memory.'
Q 06Which playwright, born in a Broadway hotel room in 1888, died in a Boston hotel room in 1953, cursing the symmetry?
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill, who told his wife Carlotta: born in a hotel room and, goddamn it, dying in a hotel room. The Nobel laureate's birthplace is now marked by a plaque in Times Square.
Q 07Which tech founder's last words, 'Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow', were revealed in a eulogy by his sister, novelist Mona Simpson?
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs, on 5 October 2011, looking past his family at something, his sister said, only he could see. Mona Simpson had only learned she had a brother when both were adults.
Q 08Which German writer reportedly asked for 'more light', 'Mehr Licht', on his Weimar deathbed in 1832?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and the full request was to open the bedroom shutter so more light could come in, which posterity trimmed to two words. He had finished Faust Part Two only months before.
Q 09Whose last words in 1886 were 'I must go in, for the fog is rising'?
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson died in Amherst, Massachusetts, on 15 May 1886, having published only a handful of poems in her lifetime; the line echoes the mist-and-twilight imagery of her verse.
Q 10Which film director reportedly said 'One never knows the ending' in his final days in 1980?
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock, who died in Bel Air on 29 April 1980; he reportedly added that one has to die to know what happens after death, 'although Catholics have their hopes'.
Q 11Which US president, who died in 1799, left ''Tis well' as his last recorded words?
George Washington
George Washington, at Mount Vernon on 14 December 1799; his secretary Tobias Lear recorded the words, spoken after Washington asked that his body not be entombed until three days after his death.
Q 12Which emperor, dying in exile on St Helena in 1821, reportedly murmured 'France, the army, head of the army, Josephine'?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte, whose last thoughts ran to country, career and the wife he had divorced for an heir, in that order. Josephine had died seven years earlier.
Q 13Which studio founder's last notes in 1966 included young actor Kurt Russell's name?
Walt Disney
Q 21'Such is life' were the last words of which Australian bushranger before his hanging in 1880?
Ned Kelly
Ned Kelly, hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 11 November 1880; the words are traditional, and one contemporary account has him sighing 'Ah well, I suppose it has come to this.'
Q 22Which naturalist declared on his deathbed in 1882, 'I am not in the least afraid to die'?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin, who died at Down House in Kent on 19 April 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey; his family recorded the remark and rejected later deathbed-conversion tales.
Q 23Which chief's dying words in 1890 called life 'a flash of a firefly in the night'?
Crowfoot
Walt Disney, who died on 15 December 1966; the note, misspelled 'Kirt Russell', appeared alongside 'Ron Miller' and 'Way Down Cellar' on a page, and Russell has said he never learned why.
Q 14Dying, asked to renounce Satan, who replied 'Now is not the time for making new enemies'?
Voltaire
Voltaire, in Paris on 30 May 1778; the priest at his bedside got no renunciation out of him, and the Paris clergy refused him a Christian burial.
Q 15'They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance': which Union general was shot in 1864?
John Sedgwick
John Sedgwick, killed by a Confederate sharpshooter at Spotsylvania Court House on 9 May 1864 while chiding his men for dodging bullets.
Q 16Regretting that he had 'but one life to give for my country', which 21-year-old spy was hanged by the British in 1776?
Nathan Hale
Nathan Hale, a Yale graduate and schoolteacher turned spy, and the line echoes Addison's play Cato, which he may have been quoting. A statue of him stands outside CIA headquarters.
Q 17'Woe, I think I'm turning into a god', joked which dying Roman emperor, mocking the custom of deifying dead rulers?
Vespasian
Vespasian, in AD 79, who then insisted an emperor should die on his feet and collapsed trying to stand. The builder of the Colosseum had a famously dry sense of humour.
Q 18Per Plato, Socrates' last words asked Crito to pay Asclepius a debt of what?
A cock
A cock: in Plato's Phaedo, Socrates tells Crito 'we owe a cock to Asclepius; pay it and do not forget' as the hemlock he was sentenced to drink in 399 BC takes hold.
Q 19Which composer, dying in Vienna in March 1827, greeted a publisher's gift of twelve bottles of wine with 'Pity, pity, too late'?
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven, who had been sent Rhine wine by his publisher and could no longer drink it. Schubert, a torchbearer at his funeral, followed him twenty months later.
Q 20Which president died on 4 July 1826 saying 'Thomas Jefferson survives', unaware Jefferson had died hours earlier?
John Adams
John Adams, at Quincy, Massachusetts, on 4 July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration; Jefferson had died at Monticello a few hours earlier, his own last words 'No, doctor, nothing more.'
Crowfoot, the Siksika (Blackfoot) chief who died on 25 April 1890; he also called life 'the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime' and 'the little shadow which runs across the grass'.
Q 24'It's a long time since I drank champagne' were the last words of which Russian playwright in 1904?
Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov, to his wife Olga Knipper at the German spa of Badenweiler on 15 July 1904; he had just told the doctor 'Ich sterbe' and drained a glass of champagne.
Q 25'It's very beautiful over there' were the enigmatic last words of which American inventor in 1931?
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison, who died at Glenmont, his home in West Orange, New Jersey, on 18 October 1931, aged 84; he spoke the words after briefly waking from a coma.
Q 26Which novelist reportedly said before dying in 1977, 'A certain butterfly is already on the wing'?
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov, who died at Lausanne on 2 July 1977; a serious lepidopterist, he had curated the butterfly collection at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology in the 1940s.
Q 27'Money can't buy life' were the final words of which musician, who died in 1981?
Bob Marley
Bob Marley, to his son Ziggy; he died of melanoma at a Miami hospital on 11 May 1981, aged 36.
Q 28Facing execution in Bolivia in 1967, who said 'Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man'?
Che Guevara
Che Guevara, executed by Bolivian sergeant Mario Terán at La Higuera on 9 October 1967; he reportedly began, 'I know you are here to kill me.'
Q 29Which crooner said 'That was a great game of golf, fellas' moments before a fatal heart attack in 1977?
Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby, who collapsed from a heart attack on 14 October 1977 after finishing a round at the La Moraleja club outside Madrid; he was 74.
Q 30'This is no way to live' were the last words of which cigar-wielding comedian, who died three days after Elvis, August 1977?
Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx, at 86, and the line is pure Groucho: a complaint, a joke and a review all at once. His death was overshadowed by Elvis Presley's three days earlier.