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 queen apologised to her executioner for stepping on his foot on the way to the scaffold?
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette said 'Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès', 'I did not do it on purpose', on 16 October 1793; her most quoted line, 'Let them eat cake', she never said.
Q 02Which former British Prime Minister is said to have declared 'I'm bored with it all' before slipping into a coma in 1965?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill reportedly said it to his son-in-law Christopher Soames after his last stroke, then sank into a coma; he died on 24 January 1965, the anniversary of his father's death.
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 revolutionary thinker, dying in London in 1883, supposedly snapped 'Last words are for fools who haven't said enough'?
Karl Marx
Karl Marx supposedly snapped it at his housekeeper, though Engels, who called that afternoon, wrote only that Marx was left alone for two minutes and found in his armchair, peacefully gone.
Q 05Which Spanish surrealist reportedly asked 'Where is my clock?' just before his death?
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí painted the melting watches of The Persistence of Memory, which is why the line stuck to him, though where the story began is unclear.
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 whispered that he had known it: born in a hotel room and dying in one. He had asked that Long Day's Journey into Night stay sealed for 25 years, but his widow had it published in 1956.
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 looked at his family and then over their shoulders past them, his sister said. Mona Simpson had not met her brother, who was adopted as a baby, until she was 25.
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 09Which poet's reported last words in 1886 were 'I must go in, for the fog is rising'?
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson had already said goodbye in a note to her cousins that read only 'Called back'; her niece later had those two words carved on her gravestone in Amherst.
Q 10Which film director reportedly said 'One never knows the ending' in his final days in 1980?
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock reportedly added that one has to die to know what happens after death, 'although Catholics have their hopes'; he was raised by strict Catholic parents and schooled by Jesuits.
Q 11Which US president, who died in 1799, left ''Tis well' as his last recorded words?
George Washington
George Washington had just made his secretary Tobias Lear promise that his body would not go into the vault until days after his death; when Lear said he understood, he answered ''Tis well'.
Q 12Which emperor, dying in exile, reportedly murmured 'France, the army, head of the army, Josephine'?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte died on St Helena in 1821, his last thoughts running to country, career and the wife he had divorced for want of an heir; Josephine had died seven years earlier.
Q 13Which studio founder, who died in 1966, left young actor Kurt Russell's name among his last written notes?
Walt Disney
Q 21'Such is life' were the reported 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 are said to have called life 'a flash of a firefly in the night'?
Crowfoot
Walt Disney scrawled 'Kirt Russell' in red pencil at the foot of a list of television projects; Russell, then a teenage Disney actor, was later shown the page and says he never learned why.
Q 14Which French philosopher, asked on his deathbed to renounce Satan, supposedly replied 'Now is not the time for making new enemies'?
Voltaire
Voltaire always gets the credit, though the attribution is disputed. He did refuse to retract his attacks on the Church, so friends had to bury him in secret at an abbey in Champagne.
Q 15Which Union general said 'They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance' moments before a sharpshooter killed him?
John Sedgwick
John Sedgwick was teasing soldiers who ducked at Spotsylvania on 9 May 1864, telling them he was ashamed of them; seconds later a bullet struck him below the left eye.
Q 16Which 21-year-old spy, hanged by the British in 1776, reportedly regretted having 'but one life to give for my country'?
Nathan Hale
Nathan Hale was a Yale graduate and schoolteacher; the line echoes Addison's play Cato, a favourite of his college circle, and it was friends who credited it to him afterwards.
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 was the offering the sick made to Asclepius, the god of medicine; Socrates asks Crito to pay it as the hemlock takes hold, which some read as him calling death a cure.
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 said it on hearing that the wine from his publisher Schott had arrived, his last recorded words. Schubert, a torchbearer at his funeral, died twenty months later.
Q 20Which president reportedly died on 4 July 1826 saying 'Thomas Jefferson survives', hours after Jefferson's own death?
John Adams
John Adams died on the Declaration's fiftieth anniversary, about five hours after Jefferson; the one relative known to be at his bedside caught only the words 'Thomas Jefferson'.
Crowfoot, chief of the Siksika (Blackfoot), died on 25 April 1890; the speech credited to him closely matches one in H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines, down to the breath in winter.
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 told his doctor in German, 'Ich sterbe', then took a glass of champagne, smiled at his wife Olga, said the line, drained the glass and lay down on his side.
Q 25'It's very beautiful over there' were the reported last words of which American inventor in 1931?
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison is said to have spoken on waking from a coma. His son had test tubes by the bed sealed, and one, labelled as his last breath, went to Henry Ford and is still shown in Ford's museum.
Q 26Which novelist reportedly said before dying in 1977, 'A certain butterfly is already on the wing'?
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov was a serious butterfly scientist as well as a novelist: in the 1940s he was the de facto curator of lepidoptery at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Q 27Which musician, who died in 1981, has long been credited with the last words 'Money can't buy life'?
Bob Marley
Bob Marley is quoted everywhere as saying it, but his son Ziggy calls the story untrue: his father's parting words to him were 'On your way up, take me up. On your way down, don't let me down.'
Q 28Which revolutionary, facing execution in Bolivia in 1967, reportedly said 'Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man'?
Che Guevara
Che Guevara was shot by Sergeant Mario Terán at La Higuera on 9 October 1967. His body was shown to the press, then buried in a secret grave that was found only in 1997, when he was reburied in Cuba.
Q 29Which crooner said 'That was a great game of golf, fellas' moments before a fatal heart attack in 1977?
Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby and his partner had just won their round at La Moraleja, near Madrid, by a single stroke on 14 October 1977; he collapsed about 20 yards from the clubhouse door.
Q 30'This is no way to live' were the reported last words of which cigar-waving comedian in August 1977?
Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx died at 86 after two months in hospital with pneumonia; his family never told him that his brother Gummo had died that April, for fear the news would weaken him further.