When the going gets tough, the tough get going

{{short description|Popular American witticism}}

{{other uses}}

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going" is a popular phrase of witticism in American English.

The phrase is an example of an antimetabole.

The origin of the phrase has been attributed to various sources. It appeared to come from American football parlance, with the earliest published sources in the 1950s, including an article in the Corpus Christi Times quoting local football coach John Thomas in 1953, and from a 1954 article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel-News quoting coach Francis William Leahy.{{Cite web |url=https://wordhistories.net/2019/01/02/going-gets-tough/ |title=origin of 'when the going gets tough, the tough get(s) going' |last=Tréguer |first=Pascal |date=2019-01-02 |website=word histories |access-date=2019-11-25}}{{Tertiary source inline |reason=Citation is to a word history blog, which appears to reliably cite two newspapers; but two individual references to each of those papers would be better for verifiability. |date=November 2019}}

In the early 21st century, the phrase is used as a form of management motivational talk, and is popular in many self-help books.{{cite book|title=The Idioms - When the going gets tough, the tough get going|url=http://www.theidioms.com/when-the-going-gets-tough-the-tough-get-going}}