When I was growing up I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I should have been more specific.

This line is widely circulated as a Lily Tomlin quip from her stand-up/monologue-style comedy, reflecting her persona’s wry take on American self-help optimism and childhood ambition. It is typically presented as a one-liner rather than tied to a single, well-documented interview moment, and it often appears in quotation collections and humor anthologies attributed to Tomlin. The joke plays on the familiar encouragement given to children—“you can be someone”—and flips it into an adult’s retrospective, suggesting that vague aspiration can lead to unintended outcomes. Because it has been repeatedly reprinted without consistent citation, the precise first performance/publication context is difficult to pin down with certainty.

The joke turns on the vagueness of the childhood wish “to be someone,” a phrase that sounds noble but is ultimately undefined. By adding “I should have been more specific,” the speaker implies that generic ambition can lead to unintended outcomes: becoming “someone” may not mean becoming the person you hoped to be, or it may arrive in an ordinary, compromised form. The line gently mocks motivational rhetoric and the myth that desire alone guarantees a satisfying identity. Its humor comes from compressing a common life lesson—clarify your goals—into a punchline that also admits the unpredictability of growing up.

1) “When I was growing up, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I realize I should have been more specific.”
2) “I always wanted to be somebody when I grew up. Now I realize I should have been more specific.”