What does “Take Me to Your Leader” mean?
Four words, two aliens, and a very patient horse.
“Take me to your leader” is the line every movie alien seems to say on stepping out of the saucer. It’s shorthand for first contact: a visitor from somewhere else, asking to speak to whoever is in charge. Here is where it actually came from, and why we named a serious research project after a joke.
Two aliens, a saucer, and a horse
The version everyone knows is usually traced to a single cartoon. On 21 March 1953, The New Yorker ran a drawing by the Scottish cartoonist Alex Graham: a flying saucer parked in a field, two small extraterrestrials beside it, politely addressing a horse.
“Kindly take us to your President!”
The joke is that the visitors have crossed space to deliver their request to the wrong species. The Yale Book of Quotations (2006) calls the cartoon “apparently the source of the science fiction catchphrase, ‘Take me to your leader.’” The painting at the top of this page is our tribute to it, and the horse shows up again on our 404 page.
The words are older than the aliens
As a plain request, the phrase was around long before anyone pinned it on Martians. Wordorigins finds it in Edward Mitford’s 1867 adventure novel The Arab’s Pledge, and notes that later 19th- and early 20th-century fiction “clearly establish[es] it as a set phrase.” Wikipedia cites the British sea captain William T. Wawn, writing in 1893 about European traders in the South Pacific: “The old ploy, ‘Take me to your leader!’ met with no response.”
In other words, it was already the line of an outsider arriving somewhere unfamiliar and asking for whoever is in charge. Science fiction just gave the outsider antennae.
Was the cartoon really first?
Probably not quite. Wordorigins points to Roger Dee’s story “Ultimatum” in the Spring 1950 issue of the pulp magazine Planet Stories, in which a visitor demands: “Take me to your president, and quick!” That makes it the first known first-contact use of a variant of the phrase, three years before the cartoon. Some language historians argue that “president” instead of “leader” doesn’t quite count. Either way, Graham’s cartoon is what made it famous.
From punchline to cliché in three years
By the mid-1950s the line was everywhere. In 1956 alone it turns up in syndicated humour columns and, in August, in an AP report of a delegate at the Republican National Convention marching up to demand “Take me to your leader.” By September a California newspaper had declared it compulsory:
“No self-respecting Martian will appear in any earthling’s science fiction story unless this statement is included.”
Within weeks it was in Bil Keane’s newspaper cartoons, and by October Variety was calling it “the old space-man gag.”
Seventy years of aliens asking for the manager
The phrase has been quoted, parodied and turned around ever since, usually by characters who know exactly how silly it sounds. Douglas Adams used it in Life, the Universe and Everything (1982). In Doctor Who’s 2007 Christmas special “Voyage of the Damned,” a character gets to say it and adds, “I’ve always wanted to say that!” Captain Pike tries it in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022). It works as a joke because everyone already knows the line.
A not-so-serious name for a very serious investigation
Our founder, Freddie Laker, bought takemetoyourleader.com in 2008, as a nod to his love of science fiction. For those of us who grew up on saucers, ray guns and Saturday-morning cartoons, “take me to your leader” is the first thing an alien says. It is a childhood memory before it is a phrase.
But the question inside the joke has stopped being a joke. Pilots have described objects they could not identify, officials have testified to Congress under oath, and governments have opened and closed offices to study what is in the sky. The record is now huge, scattered and contradictory, and most of it is hard to check.
So we kept the name and took the work seriously. Take Me to Your Leader is a non-commercial knowledge graph of public UAP claims. Every statement is traced to who said it, where they said it, and whether it was under oath. The name is a wink. The sourcing isn’t.
Read more about the project →Frequently asked
- What does “take me to your leader” mean?
- It is the stock first line of a visitor from another world: a request to be brought to whoever is in charge. It’s used as a joke about first contact, and more loosely whenever someone new arrives and asks for the person in charge.
- Where does the phrase come from?
- The alien version is usually traced to a cartoon by Alex Graham in The New Yorker on 21 March 1953, in which two aliens beside their saucer ask a horse: “Kindly take us to your President!” The Yale Book of Quotations calls it apparently the source of the catchphrase. A 1950 pulp story has an earlier variant.
- Who said it first?
- Nobody can say for certain. The words turn up in 19th-century adventure writing, a 1950 Planet Stories tale has a visitor demand “Take me to your president,” and the 1953 New Yorker cartoon is what made it famous. By 1956 newspapers were calling it a science-fiction cliché.
- Why is a UAP research site called Take Me to Your Leader?
- Because the phrase is the oldest joke about first contact, and we think the question underneath it deserves serious answers. The name is a wink; the work isn’t. Every claim in the graph is traced to who said it, where, and whether it was under oath.
Where this comes from
Dates and quotations above come from these sources. Where they disagree, as on whether 1950 or 1953 counts as the first use, we have said so.
- 01“Take me to your leader (phrase)”, Wikipedia
- 02Pascal Tréguer, “‘take me to your leader’: meaning and early occurrences”, Word Histories (2020)
- 03David Wilton, “take me to your leader”, Wordorigins.org
- 04“take me to your leader”, Languagehat
- 05Freddie Laker, “What is Take Me To Your Leader?”, Chameleon Collective (2015)