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Did the quote "No matter where you go, there you are" originate with Buckaroo Banzai or is there another original source? Where else have you heard the quote? What variations on the quote have you heard?

Send me what you've heard with some sort of source material (i.e. what film you heard the line in, who said it, what book you read it in, etc.) to figment@figmentfly.com.

According to Bill Duncan, "In the Stephen King book, Under the Dome, Section: feeling it, Chapter 3, Paragraph 10, the character Barbie thinks to himself; "Wherever you went, there you were."

According to Lorilei Lee, "Throwing in my two cents worth, the phrase "no matter where you go, there you are" is indeed a Buddhism concept. It is expanded on in a meditation book entitled "No matter where you go, there you are, the mindfullness of meditation" by Jon Kabut-Zinn.

According to Rob Allen, "I vaguely remember a Gahan Wilson cartoon in an issue of Playboy Magazine sometime around 1973, or 74. Two rumpled old people are huddled together on a dismal looking train. A sign outside the window reads, cryptically: "NOWHERE" The man says to the woman, "We're there."

According to Joe Poveroni, "All I know about the above phrase is that I became aware of my brother using it regularly around 1954 (I was 8). We lived in Northeastern Pennsylvania. He was a comic book collector but I don't know where he got the phrase from. I always assumed he made it up since no one else around (to my knowledge) ever used it. He died in 1986."

According to Gregg Ahumada, "I can't speak to the other references for the use of the phrase "No Matter where you go, there you are!" But not being much of a reader in high school, I remember coming up with the phrase and began saying it in by sophomore year of high school in 1971 at El Molino High School, in Forestville, CA. I did not know of any one else using this phrase until I heard mention a couple years ago on the radio, associating this phrase with Buckaroo Banzai. I had not even heard of Banzai until the late 1980's.

According to TServo2049, "In one episode of the 80s Canadian cartoon, "The Raccoons," Cyril Sneer says "No matter where you go, there you are."

According to Mark Grossman, "This is pretty sad but the first time I remember hearing this quote was from the Naughty By Nature track: http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Uptown-Anthem-lyrics-Naughty-By-Nature/BB320FF602BBD2A7482568B900298C0B. I love it!"

According to Kyle Kleparek, "I found this quote from Confucius (551- 479 BCE). I don’t know how accurate it is, I would guess a lot of quotes like this get attributed to him just because they have a similar style to his other quotes, and I don’t know how accurately they would translate into English.

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/no_matter_where_you_go-there_you/185303.html

There is also a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn titled “Wherever you go there you are” that was first printed in 1995. From Publishers Weekly: “Kabat-Zinn's book outlines the Buddhist technique of "mindfulness": a method of living fully in the moment without judgment.”

According to Conrad Earnest, Ph.D. : "I am responding to your FAQ section for question number 32 regarding, 'No matter where you go, there you are.' Confucius said it first, which makes sense if you consider the character."

According to Norman, "I’m amazed no one got this yet. It’s from ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius which ties in well with Buckaroo Banzai’s obsession with eastern culture and philosophy. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/confucius104274.html"

According to Jim "ray through clouds" Christ, "The earliest reference to this quote, "no matter where you go, there you are" is I believe Confucius. Where he heard it or came on to it will quite possibly forever be a mystery. I have experienced it time after time, in many movies listed by your respondees, and every time wondered why no one ever gave reference to where it came from, but reveled each time in the way it was used and in the great "wake up" that it conveys. I have come up with a quote of my own that was prompted and born of thought about this quote. My own quote that came from this one is, "where I think - I am". It answers the question that people always ask, "where are you?" in zenlike fashion, better than any other answer I have accessed.

According to Soren Wagner, "In the song "Neighbors" from the Gnarls Barkley album 'The Odd Couple' (2008), one of the verses sings "Now my neighbor likes my car, but no matter where you go, there you are."

According to Phil Logan, "This has a companion phrase - "You gotta be here if you're not all there!"

According to Danial M, "The quotation is much more ancient ... from around 1440 AD. You can find the following quote at http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2006/002/14.73.html : "So, the cross is always ready and waits for you everywhere. You cannot escape it no matter where you run, for wherever you go you are burdened with yourself. Wherever you go, there you are." —Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ, ca. A.D. 1440

According to Karl Williamson, "I heard this in the '70s from the People's Guide to Mexico. I have a '76 edition, but the first edition is shown as 12/72. I've always thought that this quote came from Carl Franz, author of the book.

According to Chris Abalo, it is the title of a song by Luka Bloom 

According to Joseph Savitski, The quote "Where ever you go, there you are" is used in the opening pages of P.J. O'Rourke's political commentary book "Give War a Chance", published in 1992.  

According to Charlie English : My father, whom is now dead, used to use the subject phrase, "Just remember wherever you go, there you are". When I was an 11 year old boy, I told him the phrase when he was about to leave on a road trip. This would have been in 1959. My father really got a kick out of the comment (phrase) and started saying it. Dad was involved in early TV and created what became TV Guide, then known as TV Weekly. He loved Art Linkletter, Arthur Godfrey, and others and their crazy things kids say and would talk it up around channels 2-4-5 in Salt Lake in the late 50's. My dad added to the phrase and said: " And if you don't watch out...you'll get there." As an adult, I've said this expanded phrase to countless contacts in my sales work. I was telling someone in our office the phrase, and he remembered your version and your website. He wanted me to relay the story to you. Many people have the same thoughts I guess. At eleven, I didn't really know what I was saying but to tease my father who was leaving on another extended road trip. My father passed it on. He died when I was 19 and I've passed it on for 43 years since I uttered it. Anyway, I told my colleague I would write your site to tell my version of your famous phrase, "No matter where...". Enjoy.

According to Chuck Henderson aka Superchuck : On the B-52's 1986 album entitled Cosmic Thing there is a song called The Girl From Imponema goes to Greenland. Towards the end of the song they sing a line that goes: "Remember whereever you go, there you are." Great album, great song and when I first heard it I said, "Hey, those chicks just quoted Buckeroo!, pretty cool, I wonder if they are gonna open for the Cavilers on the next tour." It never happened to my knowledge but I bet it would still be a great show.
Thanks,

According to Garrison Hilliard, I first encountered the "wherever you go... there you are" quote in a cheesy sci-fi flick called, I think, "Horror From The Year 10,000" (yes, folks, the guy in the spaceship and his robot pals once "enhanced" this late 'fifties flick), where the line was said by Salome Jens (later in life to be the evil lady changling on "Deep Space Nine") as the secretary to the brave scientist hero. p.s. There's also a chance that the line was uttered by a character in another 'fifties trash sci-fi flick (I'm addicted to 'em!) entitled "The Mole People" (which has also been skewered by the MST3K crew).

According to Eric, In Arc The Lad Collection for the Sony PlayStation, in the first Arc The Lad game, there is a dialogue where a monk at the Amaidar Temple says, "Wherever you go, there you are," followed by a cry of "BANZAI!"

According to Buck, In episode 13 of Odyssey 5 originally aired 09/06/02 the character Harry Mudd says to Chuck Taggart, played by Peter Weller, "..and as a rock and roll physicist once said "No matter where you go, there you are.""

According to Chris Wike, While I still don't have Showtime and haven't seen Peter Weller's series "Odyssey 5" I hear they threw another BB quote (see the first one below) at his character. Ted Raimi was a guest who tells Peter Weller's character "No matter where you go, there you are."

I hear that on Peter Weller's new Showtime series, ODYSSEY 5, a being out of the timestream tells his group, " ...to paraphrase one of your greatest thinkers,time keeps everything from happening at once." The actor he's speaking to is, yes, Peter Weller himself!

According to Chris Wike, A recent issue (#25) of the DC comic "Young Justice" on page 17. Complaining about being surrounded by superheroes after trying to get away from them for a bit, Doiby Dickles states "No matter where ya go, dere ya are!"

According to Agate, "I was reading Allen Steele's most recent book, _OceanSpace_, and I ran across the "no matter where you are" line, attributed to the man himself, B. Banzai."

According to Crose61514, "I believe that the quote "wherever you go, there you are" is originally a Zen Buddhist ideal, whch seems natural, giving that Buckaroo's father was Japanese."

According to Brian Kelly, "In the beginning of the video for Vertical Horizon's "Everything You Want", the lead singer is in a taxi. There's a sticker on the divider that says "Wherever you go, there you are."

According to RT Gault, "I was reading your faq and came to the section about the line "No matter where you go, there you are" This is a variation of the final line from Lord Buckley's monologue known as "Jonah and the Whale" which dates from the 1050s. It goes:

"Which only goes to prove, as Confushi said, 'If you get to it, and you can't do it....? There you jolly well are, aren't you!'

See: (http://www.columbia.edu/~tdk3/jonah.html)

Richard "Lord" Buckley (1906-1960) was a big cult fav among beatniks and hippies and the line has been borrowed, redressed, and recycled many times over the years. I believe than many of the examples sited on the faq page are really paraphrases of Buckley rather than paraphrases from the Buckeroo."

According to E, "I actually first saw the qoute in a book titled "Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball", by Paul Zindel. Imagine my surprise when I happened to pick up Buckaroo and he quoted my favorite line!"

According to Jeffrey S. Legg, "The saying "No matter where you go, there you are" was said by the character, PigKiller, in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome."

According to Sam Dingman, "It's right at the start when Arnold goes into Recall for a vacation and the salesman says something like (I was gonna check exactly, but I can't seem to find my copy of Total Recall) (to Arnold) "What's the same thing about every vacation you've ever been on?" Arnold looks confused, then the sales man says "You! ..... No matter where you go, there you are!" then procedes to give a little schpiel about how fun it would be to have a vacation as someone else."

According to (Unknown), "In the movie "Fear of a Black Hat", one of the characters, striving to say something deeply philosophical, says "When you take that bus... you get there." Okay, not quite the same quote, but the same basic idea.

According to Steve Iverson, "I have to tell you about a reference to "No matter where you go, there you are" that totally blew me away.

When I was a child in the sixties, there was a local kiddie show broadcast out of Minneapolis called "Lunch with Casey". Casey was a railroad engineer, and had a sidekick named Roundhouse Rodney. Roundhouse was played by a guy named Lynne Dwyer, who also played several other roles on the show. One of the roles was "Granny Lumpet" who owned the boarding house where Casey and Roundhouse lived.

Recently I obtained a video compilation of several clips from this long lost series. In one segment, Granny Lumpet is sitting in her rocking chair, reciting a series of one line words of wisdom. Among the sayings... "No matter where you go, there you are."

I figure the date of this clip to be the late sixties!

UPDATE - I have a slight clarification to make. The Granny Lumpit quote actually occurred on an LP that was released in 1972 or so, in conjuntion to the Lunch with Casey TV series. I had recently viewed the video, and confused where I had heard the famous line.

According to Mike, "In Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me, Felicity and Austin say "No matter where we go, there we are."

According to Scott Tate, This may be old news to some people, but I just ran across a variation of the "no matter where you go" quotation.

Country singer Clint Black has a song called "Wherever You Go," written by Black and frequent collaborator Hayden Nicholas. The chorus is as follows: "Wherever you go, there you are / You can run from yourself but you won't get far / You can dive to the bottom of your medicine jar / But wherever you go, there you are." Strictly as a hunch, I doubt Black intended any homage to Buckaroo; he, like plenty of other people, probably just heard the phrase somewhere without ever being aware of its connotation.

On the other hand, once you're in a Banzai frame of mind, a few other lines are also vaguely suggestive. "It's a whole other world in the palm of your hand" reminds me a little of the press conference where Buckaroo explained how the Eighth Dimension co-exists with our own ("... alien life... not on another planet, but here, maybe right inside this table, living on a simultaneous plane of existence with our own"). Another line, "out of this world and out of your mind," is a fair description of Lizardo/Whorfin.

Black first recorded the song in 1994, the same year he had a cameo in the Mel Gibson's big-screen version of Maverick. Maverick's cast/crew happened to include at least seven people who had also worked on Buckaroo Banzai ten years before. It's admittedly a bit of a stretch, but I almost wonder if those folks might not have been reminiscing about the old days, and Black happened to overhear their conversation and been influenced, consciously or otherwise. Probably not, I suppose, but it's an interesting coincidence.

The song appeared on Black's 1994 album One Emotion and is also featured on his 1996 Greatest Hits collection. (If anyone has any additions or corrections on this subject, I'll defer to their authority. To be honest, I'm not much of a country music fan, so I'm out of my depths here.)

According to Jon Kirby, I recently began playing the action/RPG game "Diablo" on my PC. In the game there is an abundance of different springs and wells. One of these such wells teleports you approx 50 ft from the well, and the quote, "where ever you go, there you are." appears on the screen for 4 seconds. The first time I saw this, and the result of the well, I literally rolled in the floor with tears streaming down my face. I am ashamed to say that this is the first time I've ever bothered to look up this sbject matter. I had never thought that my favorite movie would have this type of following."

The commissioning plaque for the USS Excelsior (from Star Trek) has the quote "No matter where you go, there you are" on it and Doug Springer found an image of this on the alt.startrek newsgroup.

According to Alan, "The first place I ever heard the quote "No matter where you go there you are." was as part of a goodbye message from the character Dwayne F. Schneider on the show "One Day at a Time." Usually this character would be invited to leave the Romano apartment and would give a cute saying as he left that always started off with, "Please always remember, and don't never forget......." I am fairly certain that it predates BB."

According to Tad Stauffer, "On the cover (as well as on the title page and the end of the introduction) of a book I received, it says "Wherever you go.....there you are". The book, The People's Guide to Mexico by Carl Franz, has a copyright year of 1974 at the beginning of the book, putting it about a decade before Buckaroo Banzai. I wasn't alive then, so it might be that it could have been some sort of catchphrase from the 70's that was used for BB."

According to Maria Nicholas, "Being part of the Amiga underground myself, I have access to an old Amiga 500 manual...on page 4-5, demonstrating how to use the 'notepad' function, the window displays 'No matter where you go, there you are...' and on the following page is saved in the notepad file as 'BB Note'. The copyright on the manual I'm looking at is from 1985, 1986 and 1987, designed for systems with 1.3 Workbench. Although they continued to make Amiga 500's into the nineties, I can't say whether the BB reference was reprinted in later editions."

According to Dave Kalis, "Ok, I think that I have a fairly cool reference here. It's almost common knowledge that many of the signs and panels of the Enterprise-D set of Star Trek had little "in-jokes" by the designers that are impossible to read on a tv screen. BUT! In Las Vegas, the Hilton opened a neat-o little thing called the Star Trek Experience, which I had the pleasure of seeing in person. At one point, participants are beamed onto the Enterprise-D. When you leave the Transporter room, look at the red sign directly ahead of the door before you turn right. It appears to be an access panel for non-existant equipment and is labelled Access Panel or somesuch. But just under the main type, in smaller font is written : "Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." So, do I win some sort of prize for coolest reference or can somebody beat this?"

According to Scott Tate, "I just ran across a variation of the "no matter where you go" line in a rather unexpected place... In the mid-eighties, there was a quarterly publication called Muppet Magazine, an amusing and surprisingly sophisticated glossy magazine put out by Henson Associates and Telepictures Publications. The last few pages of each issue consisted of a catch-all section called "Mondo Muppet: Spanning the Globe in Search of Whatever We Can Find." The Summer 1984 issue (covering the same timeframe as Buckaroo Banzai's theatrical release) included a short filler piece of "wise words" (page 52). One such gem of wisdom was "Wherever you go, there you are."

According to the Buckaroo Banzai Trivia and References Page (http://kumo.swcp.com/synth/text/bb.references/) maintained by by Vince Mora, "(All info obtained from Denise Tathwell, director of the now-defunct Buckaroo Banzai Fan Club at 20th Century Fox.)

In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the starship Excelsior's bridge dedication plaque bore the motto "No matter where you go, there you are."

In Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, one of the characters uses the line "No matter where you go ... there you are ..."

According to Katie, "A Very Brady Sequel was on the same night that I saw BB for the first time. I flipped channels right after Pa Brady said, "and remember kids, a very wise man once said, 'wherever you go, there you are.'"

Scott Tate had the following correction to the above information : "In regards to your newly-added question about references to the oft-quoted "No matter where you go" line, I have a correction.

Katie cites an occurance in A Very Brady Sequel. I suspect this was a slip of the tongue and she meant to cite 1995's The Brady Bunch Movie, not 1996's A Very Brady Sequel. The always-useful Internet Movie Database corroborates this and, additionally, that particular clip of dialogue is available on the Brady Bunch Movie soundtrack."

According to Aaron Zimlich, "No matter where you go, there we are." That is the new slogan for Nations Bank. Coincidence?? Nahhh!

 

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This page was last updated on June 10th, 2016.
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