Every day the bucket a go a well
One day the bottom a go drop out.

This line is widely circulated as a Bob Marley quotation, typically presented in Jamaican Creole (“Every day the bucket go a well…”). However, it appears to be a Jamaican proverb/folk saying that predates Marley and is often used in reggae culture to warn that ongoing wrongdoing or exploitation will eventually bring consequences. While Marley and other reggae artists sometimes drew on proverbial language, I cannot confidently place this exact couplet in a specific Marley song, interview, or documented speech. In quotation databases it is frequently attributed to him without a verifiable primary citation.

In Jamaican patois, the image is of a bucket repeatedly lowered into a well—routine use that seems harmless until, inevitably, the bucket’s bottom gives way. The proverb warns that ongoing exploitation, carelessness, or wrongdoing accumulates consequences: what appears sustainable day after day can suddenly fail. Read more broadly, it suggests that systems built on taking—whether personal habits, relationships, or political arrangements—carry an eventual breaking point. The line’s folk tone and moral clarity fit reggae’s frequent use of proverbial wisdom to express social critique and karmic inevitability.