What is With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility?

It is a catchphrase spoken by Uncle Ben to Peter Parker in Spider-Man, later adapted into an image macro snowclone of the form "With Great Power Comes Great X".

Where did With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility come from?

The phrase is traced to 19th-century sources including Voltaire's Oeuvres (1829) and Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (1827), and it first appeared in Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15 in August 1962.

What does With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility mean?

The line captures the principle of noblesse oblige, the idea that people with power carry an obligation to use it well.

How do you use With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility?

Meme creators keep the setup and replace "Responsibility" with a rhyme or punchline, often pasting the text over a Spider-Man image such as the 2002 Uncle Ben scene or a '60s cartoon panel.

Is With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility still popular?

It is a classic Spider-Man catchphrase and snowclone that stayed in rotation for years after the 2011 image macro wave, including as bait-and-switch headlines on Reddit.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

2011catchphraseclassic

Published August 15, 2026

"With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" is Uncle Ben's Spider-Man line that turned into a snowclone image macro template around 2011. The phrase traces back to 19th-century sources but was popularized for mass audiences by Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962 and Sam Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man film.

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Overview

"With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" is the line most associated with Uncle Ben in Marvel's Spider-Man, though the underlying idea about noblesse oblige predates the character by more than a century1. Online, the quote works in two ways: as a straight Spider-Man reference and as a snowclone template of the form "With Great Power Comes Great X," where the final word gets swapped for a rhyme, punchline, or topical jab3.

The line is well suited to image macros because of its two-part construction, setup on top and twist on bottom. Popular builds pair the text with screencaps of Uncle Ben from the 2002 film or with panels from the campy '60s Spider-Man cartoon3.

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Origin & Background

Platform

Marvel Comics (phrase) / YouTube and image boards (meme spread)

Creator

Stan Lee and Steve Ditko; image macro originators unknown

Date

2011

The quote's ancestry is variously traced to Voltaire's Oeuvres, Volume 48 (1829) and to Thomas C. Hansard's Parliamentary Debates from 1827, alongside other 19th-century antecedents1. Its first Spider-Man appearance was in Amazing Fantasy #15, published by Marvel in August 1962, the story that introduced Peter Parker3.

The line reached a mass audience through Sam Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man, where Uncle Ben delivers it to Peter shortly before he is killed by a carjacker. A clip of that scene was uploaded to YouTube on March 10, 2010, giving meme creators a clean source to work from2.

How It Spread

The earliest image applications came through demotivational posters, with one widely circulated example dating to around 2004 and another dated May 16, 20083. About a year after the Uncle Ben film clip landed on YouTube, in August 2011, users began building an image macro set sometimes labeled "Uncle Ben's Words of Wisdom," pairing variations on the quote with a screencap from the movie3.

The snowclone crossed over into '60s Spider-Man edits, where the flat panel art gave the line a deadpan reading3. The exact phrase also became a go-to bait-and-switch headline on Reddit, with roughly 129 posts using the line verbatim and thousands more running substitutions or riffs4.

Beyond fan memes, the phrase carried into official Marvel branding. On July 24, 2010, the documentary With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story was released, framing the biography of Spider-Man's co-creator around the quote5.

How to Use This Meme

Users typically keep "With Great Power Comes Great..." as the setup and swap "Responsibility" for a rhyme, an in-joke, or a punchline. A common convention pairs the text with a Spider-Man visual (Uncle Ben from the 2002 film, an Amazing Fantasy panel, or a still from the '60s cartoon), though any top-and-bottom macro format works3.