Serenity Prayer

The Serenity Prayer is an invocation by the petitioner for wisdom to understand the difference between circumstances ("things") that can and cannot be changed, asking courage to take action in the case of the former, and serenity to accept in the case of the latter.
The prayer has achieved very wide distribution, spreading through the YWCA and other groups in the 1930s, and in Alcoholics Anonymous and related organizational materials since at least 1941. Since at least the early 1960s, commercial enterprises such as Hallmark Cards have used the prayer in its greeting cards and gift items. The prayer has also made its way into popular culture, including in works by Bill Watterson, Nikolaj Velimirović, Neil Young, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Bryan Lee O'Malley and Sinéad O'Connor, and films and television series including True Detective and The Colors Within.
A version of the prayer was originally composed by Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the early 1930s. Initially popularized by one of his colleagues, the prayer began to spread widely without reference to the original author.
Around 1932, Niebuhr is reported to have first used the prayer as the last part of a longer prayer. In an October 31, 1932 diary entry by American YWCA official Winnifred Wygal, she quotes her colleague Niebuhr:
Drawing on this, Wygal published a prayer in the March 1933 edition of YWCA periodical The Woman's Press, which was soon shared with a broader audience on the front page of the Santa Cruz Sentinel of March 15, 1933. It read:
The prayer was also quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch later that month. Substantial quotes from the prayer were also printed in two Atlanta newspapers that month.
The prayer appeared a few additional times in American and Canadian newspapers in the 1930s, associated with the YWCA or with individual women. In 1937, the prayer was published in a Christian student newsletter, attributing it to Niebuhr.
Wygal published the prayer again in her 1940 book We Plan Our Own Worship Services, and attributed it to Niebuhr. It took this form:
The prayer became published in English language newspapers much more from 1940, but never attributed to Wygal or Niebuhr.
In June 1941, the prayer was published in an obituary in the New York Herald Tribune, and from here became known by the first Alcoholics Anonymous group. The organisation embraced it and spread it widely. It was initially known within the group as "The AA prayer", but by the late 1940s, was known as "the serenity prayer."
Niebuhr presented it in a 1943 sermon at Heath Evangelical Union Church in Heath, Massachusetts. Niebuhr's wife and daughter would later say this was when they understood the prayer was first written and used. It then also appeared in a sermon of Niebuhr's in the 1944 A Book of Prayers and Services for the Armed Forces, and was printed on cards for American soldiers in WWII. From January 1944, Niebuhr began being cited as the source of the prayer in newspaper articles.
Niebuhr also published it in a magazine column in 1951. By this stage, the prayer had become commonly quoted as:
In 1962, Hallmark began using the prayer in its graduation cards, crediting Niebuhr, and in the 1970s they also produced a wall plaque. Posters and household ornaments were produced by others without attribution.
Rhetorician William FitzGerald believes Wygal wrote the prayer, arguing sexism as the reason for misattribution. Quotation researcher Fred Shapiro has alternated in his conclusions over time. In 2021's The New Yale Book of Quotations, and in his discussion of it, says Wygal "was the author of the earliest known occurrence".
The prayer has appeared in many versions. Reinhold Niebuhr's versions of the prayer were always printed as a single prose sentence; printings that set out the prayer as three lines of verse modify the author's original version. The best-known form is a late version, as it includes a reference to grace not found before 1951:
The following clauses were added in the AA Origin of the Serenity Prayer: A Historic Paper but were not part of the tripartite original. Niebuhr's daughter in her book The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Time of Peace and War said: "... their message and their tone are not in any way Niebuhrian."
A version, apparently quoted from memory and asking for the author of the quotation, appeared in the "Queries and Answers" column in The New York Times Book Review in July 1950, and received a reply in the same column in August 1950, attributing the prayer to Niebuhr, and quoting it as follows:
Today, twelve-step recovery programs generally use a slightly different version, the text of which has been adopted in official publications from groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous:
1st-century Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus wrote:
The 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar Shantideva of the ancient Nalanda Mahavihara suggested:
The 11th-century Jewish philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol wrote:
A Mother Goose rhyme (dating back to at least 1827) has been juxtaposed with Niebuhr's prayer by philosopher W. W. Bartley:
In 1801, German philosopher Friedrich Schiller wrote:
The prayer has been variously attributed (without evidence) to Thomas Aquinas, Cicero, Augustine, Boethius, Marcus Aurelius, and Francis of Assisi, among others.
Theodor Wilhelm, a professor of education at the University of Kiel, published a German version of the prayer under the pseudonym "Friedrich Oetinger" in 1951. Wilhelm's version of the prayer became popular in West Germany, where it was widely but falsely attributed to the 18th-century philosopher Friedrich Christoph Oetinger. Elisabeth Sifton described Wilhelm's account of the history of the prayer as "dishonest".
The prayer became more widely known after being brought to the attention of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1941 by an early member, who came upon it in a caption in a "routine New York Herald Tribune obituary". The original clipping appeared in the May 28, 1941, public notices section: "Mother--God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Goodby." AA's co-founder Bill W. and the staff liked the prayer and had it printed in modified form and handed around. It has been part of Alcoholics Anonymous ever since, and has also been used in other twelve-step programs. "Never had we seen so much A.A. in so few words," noted Bill W. The January 1950 edition of the Grapevine (The International Journal of Alcoholics Anonymous) identifies Niebuhr as the author, as does the AA web site.