Dear Quote Investigator: Many odd quotations are credited to the brilliant scientist Albert Einstein, and recently I have seen another peculiar example featured on Facebook and multiple websites:

Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.

I do not think this is physics, and I do not think these are Einstein’s words. The statement appears similar to tenets popularized in New Age books and magazines. Can you find out more about this quotation?

Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Albert Einstein said this. It does not appear in the comprehensive collection of quotations “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” from Princeton University Press [UQEI].

The earliest evidence QI can find for this quote is in a digital archive captured in April 2000 of a webpage from a site called bashar.org. The data can be viewed by using the “Wayback Machine”, a service provided by the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization which offers permanent storage and access to massive collections of digitized materials.

A set of computers at the Internet Archive regularly crawl the web and download accessible webpages. The data is stored for later examination by researchers, historians, and the curious. The “Wayback Machine” provides a front-end to a search engine that allows a user to view the contents of an individual webpage as it appeared on dates from the past. However, only a limited number of webpages and dates are available for study.

On April 8, 2000 a computer at the Internet Archive visited the website bashar.org and downloaded a webpage that included the quotation under investigation in the last paragraph. The title at the top of the page was “The Ides of March”. The words on the page were not attributed to Albert Einstein. Instead, the name Darryl Anka appeared at the bottom of the page along with a copyright symbol and a 1996 date. The webpage was likely created sometime between 1996 and April 2000.

The Wikipedia entry for Darryl Anka states that he worked as a special effects artist for several motion pictures. In addition, it states that Anka is known as a channeler [WKDA]:

Anka claims that he began to communicate, through trance-channeling, with an extra-terrestrial entity called Bashar in 1983. He describes Bashar as existing in a parallel reality, in a time frame that we perceive as the future.

The webpage at bashar.org from April 2000 explicated the philosophy of Bashar as channeled by Anka. The page stated: “Everything you could ever want, it has already been given to you”. Here is an additional excerpt to illuminate the viewpoint being espoused [DABS]:

Everything is here and now, but in various states of visibility and invisibility depending upon the frequency that you are operating on, and that means the belief system, the definitions that you buy into most strongly.

The background given above might help the reader to interpret the final paragraph on the webpage [DABS]:

Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is physics.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Albert Einstein did speak about the relationship between matter and energy. The following quote is from a 1948 film called “Atomic Physics” [AEAP]:

It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing — a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind.

A website called lightascension.com has a webpage that displays a list of quotations. A condensed version of the saying provided by the questioner is attributed to “Bashar” [LABH]:

“Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality.”—Bashar

In March 2012 a discussion about the provenance of the quotation occurred at the website physicsforums.com. A participant using the handle “Fredrik” found an instance of the quote on a website associated with Darryl Anka and Bashar [PFFR].

In conclusion, this saying is not from Albert Einstein. It is probably from a channeler named Darryl Anka who has assigned the words to an entity named Bashar.

(Many thanks to Phil Earnhardt whose email query inspired this question and answer.)

[UQEI] 2010, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, Edited by Alice Calaprice, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. (Verified on paper)

[WKDA] Wikipedia entry: Darryl Anka. (Accessed en.wikipedia.org on May 15, 2012) link

[DABS] Internet Archive: Way Back Machine, Web capture date: April 8, 2000, Archive download URL: www.bashar.org/about/IdesofMarch.html, Title: “The Ides of March”. (Accessed at web.archive.org on May 15, 2012) link

[AEAP] American Institute of Physics (AIP) website, Segment from soundtrack of the 1948 film “Atomic Physics”, J. Arthur Rank Organization, Ltd. (Accessed aip.org  May 15, 2012) link

[LABH] Website: Light Ascension for Light Workers, Name on welcome page: Sandy Stevenson, Title page with quotation: “Wise Words Page 2″. (Accessed lightascension.com on May 15, 2012) link

[PFFR] Website: Physics Forums, Discussion thread title: “Einstein misquoted?”. Date on page: March 3, 2012. (Accessed physicsforums.com on May 15, 2012) link

Dear Quote Investigator: The Saturday Night Live television program once featured skits with a character named Stuart Smalley who was played by the comedian and now senator Al Franken. Smalley was enamored with self-help programs and often used the following catch phrase:

Denial is not a river in Egypt.

I have also heard a very similar phrase credited to Mark Twain:

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Could you explore the origin of this quotation?

Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Mark Twain used this expression. In 1936 a version of this pun-based joke was described by a syndicated newspaper columnist who was responding to a popular song. This citation was located by the extraordinary etymologist Barry Popik [ORSG]:

There is a goofy song going the rounds. The radio seems full of it. It prompts this first paragraph. Excuse it, please. What is denial? De Nile, teacher, is a river in Egypt. That was a terrible boner. You ought to know better than that.

In 1960 another instance of the quip appeared in Boys’ Life magazine. The periodical used the term “Daffynishion” to refer to definitions incorporating word play [BLRH]:

Daffynishion: Denial—A river in Egypt.—Ray Hallinan, Seattle 66, Wash.

These early examples did not include the negation which is part of most modern versions. In 1986 a version of the joke was published by the popular columnist Herb Caen in the San Francisco Chronicle. The words appeared anonymously as a witty response [SFHC]:

Sighted by Ivan Cutler at Kent’s Deli at Ninth and Mish’: a sign on the cash register reading, “Tipping Is Not a City in China.” The sequel is a nearby graffito: “And Denial Is Not a River in Egypt.”

Al Franken, in the persona of Stuart Smalley, did use this saying, but his satirical character was introduced to the television audience in 1991. Franken was employing a phrase that was already in circulation in the domain of self-help and addiction counseling.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In 1988 an autobiography of the popular musician David Crosby was released, and it included details of his self-destructive addictive behaviors. Crosby used the saying under investigation when speaking to associates who he felt were denying their own problematic actions [LGDC]:

The level of self-delusion was high and it was a fundamental problem that had no solution. As David is fond of saying to friends who are the same shape now as he was then: “Denial is not a river in Egypt.”

In March 1989 the expression appeared in the title of a column by Joe Bob Briggs, the pen name of John Irving Bloom. The term “Betty-Ford” in the following is a reference to the Betty Ford Center, a facility that helps individuals recover from chemical dependencies [TTJB]:

Betty-Ford me!; Denial is not a river in Egypt

In May 1989 the phrase was used by Dr. James H. ‘Red’ Duke, a noted trauma surgeon and educator [JHRD]:

“I don’t know why this country chooses to ignore the epidemic of injury in this nation that runs rampant all the time, killing more people on the highways every year than we did in the entire Vietnam War,’ Dr. Duke said.

“Why we choose to ignore that, I don’t know,’ he said. “But one of my favorite sayings about that is: Denial ain’t a river in Egypt .’”

In June 1990 the saying was used as the title of a play performed before an elementary school audience. The playwrights were Jennifer Middlesworth and Richard Greene [OCJM]:

Somewhere amid the laughing, clapping and general good time Concordia Elementary School students had while watching their classmates perform “Denial Is Not A River In Egypt ,” they received an important message: Alcohol and drugs can send a life down the drain.

In March 1991 former Vice President Al Gore penned an opinion piece that was printed in multiple newspapers. Gore cited the astronomer Carl Sagan and the rock band Dire Straits when he used the expression [AGFW]:

Global warming may be hard to think about, but it is rapidly being recognized as one of the most serious problems humans face.

The administration’s effort to pretend it does not exist reminds me of the point made by scientist Carl Sagan, when he quotes a song by Dire Straits: “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”

The Wikipedia entry for the character Stuart Smalley claims that he first appeared in the February 9, 1991 episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Kevin Bacon. QI has not independently verified this information.

In October 1992 a Pennsylvania newspaper published an interview with Al Franken. One topic of conversation was Franken’s recently released book with a rather lengthy title: “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!: Daily Affirmations By Stuart Smalley” [AFMV]:

“I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “It has a lot of (12-step) program wisdom, like ‘Denial is not just a river in Egypt.’”

In conclusion, the primary word play of this comical phrase involves: “denial” and “de Nile” or  “the Nile”. This basic joke was in circulation by 1936. The version of the quip using negation and suggesting a subtext of psychological analysis appeared by the 1980s. The phrase “And Denial Is Not a River in Egypt” was spotted as an anonymous graffito in 1986.

Update history: On May 11, 2012 a citation dated 1936 found by Barry Popik was was added.

(Many thanks to Robert MacLeay whose comment at the Freakonomics blog inspired this question and answer.)

[ORSG] 1936 November 3, Oregonian, New Bid Called Sut-Over-Suit by Sam Gordon: The Kibitzer, Page 8, Column 5, Portland, Oregon. (GenealogyBank)

[BLRH] 1960 February, Boys’ Life, Think and Grin, Page 90, Column 2, Boy Scouts of America, Inc. (Google Books full view) link

[SFHC] 1986 June 19, San Francisco Chronicle, Once Upon a Deadline by Herb Caen, Page: 45, San Francisco, California. (NewsBank Access World News)

[LGDC] 1988, Long Time Gone: The Autobiography of David Crosby by David Crosby and Carl Gottlieb, Page 352, Doubleday, New York. (Verified on paper)

[TTJB] 1989 March 5, Trenton Evening Times, “Betty-Ford me!; Denial is not a river in Egypt” by Joe Bob Briggs, Page CC2, [GNB Page 155], Trenton, New Jersey. (GenealogyBank)

[JHRD] 1989 May 26, Dallas Morning News, “Houston colleagues want ‘Red’ Duke to replace Koop – Folksy TV doctor says he’d take surgeon general’s job if he had offer” by Jeff Awalt, [Associated Press], Page: 24A, Dallas, Texas. (NewsBank Access World News)

[OCJM] 1990 June 14, The Orange County Register, “Making a play against drugs – San Clemente students perform ‘Denial’ to educate peers” by Lauren Cooper, Page: 01, Orange County, California. (NewsBank Access World News)

[AGFW] 1991 March 10, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “Where is Bush’s resolve on energy crisis?” by Al Gore, Page: 7, Fort Worth, Texas. (NewsBank Access World News)

[AFMV] 1992 October 28, Monessen Valley Independent, Smalley gives himself OK to be Al Franken, Page 5B, Monessen, Pennsylvania. (NewspaperArchive)

Dear Quote Investigator: While reading a novel about the remarkable inventor Nikola Tesla I came across a statement credited to Thomas Edison that I find very hard to believe [TLDS]:

Everyone steals in commerce and industry. I’ve stolen a lot, myself. But I know how to steal! They don’t know how to steal!

Did Edison really say something like this? I know that Tesla and Edison were rivals, and perhaps the author of this Tesla book is biased against Edison. I hesitate to believe that this quotation is accurate.

Quote Investigator: A remark that was nearly identical to the one above was attributed to Edison in an article published in Harper’s magazine in September 1932 titled “Edison in His Laboratory”. The statement began with “everybody” instead of “everyone”. Note that Edison died in 1931, the year before the Harper’s article was printed. The author of the article was Martin André Rosanoff who performed chemical investigations for Edison.

Rosanoff stated that Edison asked him to test the composition of a wax that was used by a rival company because Edison suspected that the other company had stolen a secret formula for the wax. In the following excerpt Rosanoff referred to Edison as “the Old Man” [MRTE]:

The first I knew of this was when the Old Man asked me to investigate it and ascertain whether the rival’s wax was really new. He said I might be called upon to testify in court and urged me to make my experimental study thorough.

Rosanoff performed an exhaustive analysis of the wax and concluded that the rival’s wax was identical in composition to that used by Edison’s company. Rosanoff was angered by this apparent commercial theft, and described the data to Edison [MRTE]:

When I reported my results to the Old Man with spirited indignation at the unsavory ways of his rival, he asked with a merry twinkle of amusement, “What are you so excited about? Everybody steals in commerce and industry. I’ve stolen a lot myself. But I knew how to steal. They don’t know how to steal—that’s all that’s the matter with them” I said nothing; my breath was taken away.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In 1979 the Los Angeles Times published a book review of an Edison biography called “A Streak of Luck” that included part of the quotation [LTRK]:

“Everybody steals in commerce and industry,” he said. “I’ve stolen a lot myself.”

The review also claimed that the author of the article in Harper’s had been fired by Edison:

A short time later, he fired Rosanoff as a “foreigner.”

In 1990 the Sacramento Bee published a review of a 90-minute film titled “The Missing Reel” broadcast on the Bravo cable channel. The film explored the disappearance of Louis Le Prince who was a rival inventor of the motion picture camera. The reviewer attributed a variant of the quotation to Edison [SBWG]:

He also said once: Everybody steals in commerce and industry. I’ve stolen a lot myself. The thing is to know how to steal.

The film mentioned above also had a companion book. In 1994 a newspaper in Tennessee stated that the book contained a variant of the Edison statement [CADB]:

In 1990 Rawlence published the book, The Missing Reel: the Untold Story of the Lost Inventor of Moving Pictures. On a preface page, he quotes Edison as follows: “Everyone steals in industry and commerce. I’ve stolen a lot myself. The thing is to know how to steal.”

In conclusion, this quotation was printed in a magazine article shortly after the death of Edison in 1932. The accuracy of the words is dependent on the reliability of the memory of the article author, Martin André Rosanoff.

[TLDS] 1999, Tesla: The Modern Sorcerer by Daniel Blair Stewart, Chapter: 61, Page 411, Frog, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California. (Amazon Look Inside, Google Books Preview)

[MRTE] 1932 September, Harper’s Magazine, Volume 165, Edison in His Laboratory by M. A. Rosanoff, Start Page 402, Quote Page 406, Harper & Brothers, New York. (Verified on microfilm)

[LTRK] 1979 April 15, Los Angeles Times, Illuminating a hard-driving American hero Robert Kirsch, [Book Review of "A Streak of Luck" by Robert Conot], Start Page J1, Quote Page J8, Los Angeles, California. (ProQuest)

[SBWG] 1990 July 7, Sacramento Bee, Plenty of Intrigue in “Reel” – Disappearance of an Edison Rival Explored by William Glackin, Page: SC7, Sacramento, California. (NewsBank Access World News)

[CADB] 1994 June 25, The Commercial Appeal, Section: Appeal, Author: Donald La Badie, Page: C3, Memphis, Tennessee. (NewsBank Access World News)

Dear Quote Investigator: Recently, a medical emergency threw all my carefully constructed plans into complete disarray. I was reminded of a remarkably astute and ruefully humorous saying credited to the musical superstar John Lennon:

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

When did he say this? Was he the first to express this idea?

Quote Investigator: John Lennon did compose a song containing this saying and released it in 1980. The song was called “Beautiful Boy” or “Darling Boy” and it was part of the album “Double Fantasy”. Lennon wrote the lyrics about his experiences with his son Sean whose mother is Yoko Ono. YouTube has a streamable version of the song, and the phrase can be heard at 2 minutes 16 seconds into the track which has a total length of 4 minutes 12 seconds. Lennon sings [BBJL]:

Before you cross the street take my hand.
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

But the general expression can be traced back more than two decades before this time. The first known appearance was in an issue of Reader’s Digest magazine dated January 1957. The statement was printed together with nine other unrelated sayings in a section called “Quotable Quotes” [RDAS]:

Allen Saunders: Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.
—Publishers Syndicate

The newspaper comic strip “Steve Roper” was written by an individual named Allen Saunders and distributed by Publishers Syndicate. It is likely that the attribution above was referencing him. Saunders also worked on the strips “Mary Worth” and “Kerry Drake.” But the saying has not yet been located in any of these comics. Three important reference works list the Reader’s Digest citation to Saunders: The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs [DPAS], The Quote Verifier [QVAS], and The Yale Book of Quotations [YQAS].

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Many of the quotations published in the widely-circulated Reader’s Digest were reprinted in other periodicals. For example, a Charleston, South Carolina paper printed the saying in January 1957 [SCRD]:

“Life,” reads a line of an article in The Reader’s Digest, “is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” How true.
The trouble is most of us don’t realize this except in retrospect and then life has already happened.

In June 1957 the adage appeared in a Texas newspaper as a freestanding filler item. The attribution given was the same as that in the Reader’s Digest: “Allen Saunders, Publishers Syndicate”, but the magazine was not mentioned [DRAS].

In September 1957 the quote was included in an advertisement for Swanson’s, a clothing retailer. The words were listed together with several other sayings and no attribution was provided [THSW]. In November 1957 the quote appeared in “The Irish Digest” as a filler item. No attribution was listed [IDAN].

In March 1958 the popular syndicated columnist Earl Wilson published a version of the saying in a subsection titled “Earl’s Pearls”. The words were identical except for the use of the contraction “we’re”. This time a new person named Quin Ryan received acknowledgement [EWQR]:

Some people have everything – except fun … Life, says Quin Ryan of Chicago, is what happens to us while we’re making other plans … See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil — and half the women’s clubs would fold up in a hurry.

In April 1958 a slightly modified version of the saying was printed in a column of the Boston Globe. The word “when” replaced the word “while”, and no credit was given [BGAN]:

Life is what happens to us when we are making other plans.

In September 1958 a variant of the adage was published in a Chicago Tribune column “A Line O’ Type or Two”. The statement was credited to Quin Ryan [CTQR]:

PAINFUL TRUTH
Life is what happens to every man’s Career while he’s making other plans. Quin Ryan

In 1961 the maxim was associated with another person in the pages of the Los Angeles Sentinel [LSWW]:

Bon vivant, Walter Ward, from somewhere in Italy writes to say, “Life is what happens to us while we’re making other plans.”

In 1962 the syndicated columnist Larry Wolters reported on the expression in “Radio TV Gag Bag”. This column specialized in collecting jokes and bon mots that were broadcast on radio and television stations in the United States. Wolters identified the performer who delivered the line [CTHC]:

Henry Cooke: “A thoughtful man is one who gives his wife a birthday present without mentioning her birthday past.”
Also: “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”

In 1963 the saying reappeared in the column of Earl Wilson, but this time the word “busy” was inserted, and the phrase was reassigned to Henry Cooke [EWHC]:

REMEMBERED QUOTE: Life is what happens to us while we are busy making other plans. — Henry Cooke.

In 1964 the syndicated columnist and quotation collector Bennett Cerf ascribed a version of the saying to the author Robert Balzer [BCRB]:

Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans. —Robert Balzer.

In 1964 the maxim reappeared in the column of Larry Wolters now called “Gag Bag”, but this time the phrase was reassigned to Robert Balzer [LWHC]:

Robert Balzer: “Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.”

In 1965 Earl Wilson decided that the expression was interesting enough to print another time. He assigned the following concise version to someone named L. S. McCandless [EWLM]:

REMEMBERED QUOTE: “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” — L. S. McCandless.

In 1967 a variant of the adage was printed in the popular “Dear Abby” column of Pauline Phillips [DAPP]:

Confidential To Del Ray Beachcomber: Yes. See your lawyer about changing your will. Fate is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.

In 1979 “1,001 Logical Laws” compiled by John Peers included the saying and connected it to someone named Knight [LKJP]:

Knight’s Law:  Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.

In conclusion, based on currently available evidence this piece of wisdom can be credited to Allen Saunders. John Lennon also included it in the lyrics of a song many years later. The expression is quite popular and has acquired multiple attributions over the decades.

(Many thanks to Jay whose question initiated this exploration. I am glad everything worked out well.)

[BBJL] YouTube video, Title: John Lennon – Beautiful Boy, Uploaded by TheInnerRevolution on Nov 22, 2009. (Accessed at youtube.com on May 4, 2012) link

[RDAS] 1957 January, Reader’s Digest, Quotable Quotes, Page 32, The Reader’s Digest Association. (Verified on paper)

[DPAS] 2012, The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, Compiled by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Fred R. Shapiro, Page 145, Yale University Press, New Haven. (Verified on paper)

[QVAS] 2006, The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes, Page 123-124 and 305, St Martin’s Griffin, New York. (Verified on paper)

[YQAS] 2006, The Yale Book of Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro, Section Allen Saunders, Page 666, Yale University Press, New Haven. (Verified on paper)

[SCRD] 1957 January 27, News And Courier, Lowcountry Gossip: Beaufort TV Viewer Finds Quiz Programs Distasteful by Chlotilde R. Martin, Page 11-B, Column 1, Charleston, South Carolina. (Google News Archive)

[DRAS] 1957 June 21, Denton Record-Chronicle, Round About Town by R. J. (Bob) Edwards, Page 4, Column 3, Denton, Texas. (NewspaperArchive)

[THSW] 1957 September 24, Titusville Herald, A Little of This and That, [Quotation within an advertisement for a store named Swanson's], Page 2, Column 2, Titusville, Pennsylvania. (NewspaperArchive)

[IDAN] 1957 November, The Irish Digest, Volume 61, [One of two unrelated freestanding quotations at the bottom of the page], Page 52, Irish Digest, Dublin, Ireland. (Verified on microfilm)

[EWQR] 1958 March 01, Rockford Register-Republic, Earl’s Pearls by Earl Wilson [Syndicated], Page 2-A, Column 4, Rockford, Illinois. (GenealogyBank)

[BGAN] 1958 April 10, Boston Globe, “All Sorts: That Boston Accent…What Did He Say?” by Joe Harrington, Page 25, Boston, Massachusetts (ProQuest)

[CTQR] 1958 September 18, Chicago Tribune, A Line O’ Type or Two, Page 16, Chicago, Illinois. (ProQuest)

[LSWW] 1961 September 14, Los Angeles Sentinel, Theatricals: The Stem by Paul C. McGee, Page C2, Los Angeles, California. (ProQuest)

[CTHC] 1962 August 12, Chicago Tribune, “Radio TV Gag Bag” by Larry Wolters, Page C28, Chicago, Illinois. (ProQuest)

[EWHC] 1963 April 30, Aberdeen American News [Aberdeen Daily News], Earl Wilson’s New York, Page 4, Column 5, Aberdeen, South Dakota. (GenealogyBank)

[BCRB] 1964 January 15, State Times Advocate, Try and Stop Me by Bennett Cerf, Page 10-C, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (GenealogyBank)

[LWHC] 1964 May 17, Chicago Tribune, Larry Wolters’ Gag Bag, Page 115, Chicago, Illinois. (ProQuest)

[EWLM] 1965 November 19, Dallas Morning News, It Happened Last Night by Earl Wilson, Section: A, Page 27, Dallas, Texas. (GenealogyBank)

[DAPP] 1967 December 8, Plain Dealer, Dear Abby: Fresh News; Stale Money by Abigail Van Buren, Page 39, Column 4, Cleveland, Ohio. (GenealogyBank)

[LKJP] 1979, 1,001 Logical Laws, Accurate Axioms, Profound Principles, Compiled by John Peers, Edited by Gordon Bennett, Page 81, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York. (Verified on paper)

Dear Quote Investigator: Comments about stylish clothing always remind me of Mark Twain’s comment:

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.

But I cannot seem to find any direct reference for this quote. The best citation I have seen was dated more than fifteen years after Twain’s death in 1910.

Quote Investigator: The earliest known evidence for this saying was published in the book: “More Maxims of Mark”. This slim volume was compiled by Merle Johnson and privately printed in November 1927. Only fifty first edition copies were created, so gaining access to the work can be difficult. The Rubenstein Rare Book Library at Duke University holds book number 14 of 50. With the help of digital images captured by a friend, QI was able to verify that the quotation is present on page number 6 of this book. Below is the saying under investigation together with the preceding and succeeding entries. All the maxims in the work were presented in uppercase [MJMT]:

CIVILIZATION IS A LIMITLESS MULTIPLICATION OF UNNECESSARY NECESSARIES.

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN. NAKED PEOPLE HAVE LITTLE OR NO INFLUENCE IN SOCIETY.

DO YOUR DUTY TODAY AND REPENT TOMORROW.

Merle Johnson was a rare book collector, and he published the first careful bibliography of Twain’s works in 1910 shortly after the writer’s death. Twain scholars believe that the sayings compiled by Johnson in “More Maxims of Mark” are properly ascribed to Twain.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

A passage that Twain wrote in one of his notebooks in the period around August 1897 dealt with the theme of this quotation. In 1935 his biographer Albert Bigelow Paine selected material from the author’s collection of notes and published a volume called “Mark Twain’s Notebook”. Here is the relevant passage [APMT]:

Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.

In 1905 Twain published a story titled “The Czar’s Soliloquy” in The North American Review. The work began with an epigram that provided the framework of the narrative [CSMT]:

After the Czar’s morning bath it is his habit to meditate an hour before dressing himself—London Times Correspondence.

In the following two short excerpts Twain was writing in the voice of the Czar of Russia. The opinions being expressed were the Czar’s constructed and refracted through the creative prism of Twain’s intellect [CSMT]:

As Teufelsdröckh suggested what would man be—what would any man be—without his clothes? As soon as one stops and thinks over that proposition, one realizes that without his clothes a man would be nothing at all; that the clothes do not merely make the man, the clothes are the man; that without them he is a cipher, a vacancy, a nobody, a nothing.

…

There is no power without clothes. It is the power that governs the human race. Strip its chiefs to the skin, and no State could be governed; naked officials could exercise no authority; they would look (and be) like everybody else–commonplace, inconsequential.

In 1927 “More Maxims of Mark” was published and it included the quotation as mentioned above in this post. Here is an image showing three of the maxims on page six [MJMT]:

Many variations of the expression “clothes make the man” have been created over the years. Here are two examples printed in “Esar’s Comic Dictionary” in 1943 [CDEE]:

Clothes make the man—uncomfortable.

Clothes make the man, but when it comes to a woman, clothes merely show how she is made.

In conclusion, it is reasonable to credit Twain with this quotation despite the fact that the earliest evidence is posthumous.

[MJMT] 1927, More Maxims of Mark by Mark Twain, Compiled by Merle Johnson, Quote Page 6, First edition privately printed November 1927; Number 14 of 50 copies. (Verified with page images from the Rubenstein Library at Duke University)

[APMT] 1935, “Mark Twain’s Notebook” by Mark Twain, Edited by Albert Bigelow Paine, Page 337, [August or September 1897], Harper & Brothers, New York. (Verified on paper)

[CSMT] 1905 March, The North American Review, Volume 180, Number 3, The Czar’s Soliloquy by Mark Twain, Start Page 321, Quote Page 321 and 322, The North American Review Publishing Company, Franklin Square, New York. (Google Books full view) link

[CDEE] 1943, Esar’s Comic Dictionary by Evan Esar, Page 52 and 292, Harvest House, New York. (Verified on paper)

Dear Quote Investigator: The Times of London has a regular Quote-of-the-Day feature called “Last Word”. My question is about the following insightful quotation [TLJU]:

Laughter would be bereft if snobbery died.

The newspaper credited this remark to Archbishop James Ussher who lived between 1581 and 1656. Ussher was famous for intensely studying sacred and secular texts and then calculating the date of the creation of the universe which he gave as October 23, 4004 BC. Evidence today suggests that Ussher’s chronology was not completely accurate.

But this query was prompted by another anomalous chronology. According to the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary the noun “snob” was first recorded in 1785, at which time it meant: “A shoemaker or cobbler; a cobbler’s apprentice”. Also, the noun “snobbery” dates from 1833 long after after Ussher’s death. Stylistically, the quotation seems modern to me. If Ussher wrote this statement then someone else must have substantially modified it. Could you tell me who authored this quotation and when?

Quote Investigator: The UK newspaper The Times on June 16, 2011 did publish the following quote and ascription [TLJU]:

“Laughter would be bereft if snobbery died.”
James Ussher, Irish prelate, 1581-1656

But Ussher had nothing to do with this aphorism. Congratulations to the questioner for her perceptive analysis of the anachronistic vocabulary. The earliest known evidence of this maxim appeared in 1955 more than three hundred and fifty years after the death of Ussher.

The English actor, writer, and humorist Peter Ustinov is the most likely creator.  In March 1955 the UK Sunday newspaper The Observer printed the quotation in a section called “Sayings of the Week”. The original wording was slightly different [TOPU]:

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died. —Mr. Peter Ustinov

What caused this bizarre mistake? There is a known error mechanism that provides a plausible explanation. In an alphabetical listing the names “Ussher” and “Ustinov” would be close to one another. In fact, in some lists of quotations the entries for the two names would be adjacent. A hurried and harried individual who was rapidly searching for a name to assign to a quotation might look above and below an entry and then select any visible name.

For example, here is a list of quotations lexically ordered based on ascription that might cause confusion:

The sound of Brahman is OM. At the end of OM is silence. It is a silence of joy.
— Upanishads
Which beginning of time [the Creation] according to our Chronologie, fell upon the entrance of the night preceding the twenty third day of October in the year of the Julian Calendar, 710 [4004 B.C.].
— James Ussher
Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.
— Peter Ustinov
All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to a judicious use of sabotage.
— Thorsten Veblen
Never have children, only grandchildren.
— Gore Vidal

The Upanishads did not claim that the universe began in 4004 BC. James Ussher was not commenting about humor. Thorsten Veblen was not advocating childlessness. One must look below each statement and not above to determine the proper attribution.

The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations [PGPU] and the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations [OXPU] both listed Ustinov’s remark properly ascribed and containing the word “bereaved”.

There is another Ussher that may have caused confusion. The Irish essayist and translator Arland Ussher is featured in some compilations of memorable phrases. For example, the 1997 book “Dictionary of Quotations in Communications” assigns the following to Ussher [QCAL]:

Humor is the sense of the Absurd which is despair refusing to take itself seriously.

This statement might have appeared immediately adjacent to the quote from Ustinov. Indeed, a thematically organized quote collection would have placed both sayings into the “humor” section. The type of ordering error already discussed might have forged an incorrect linkage between Ustinov’s comment and Arland Ussher. Further sloppiness might have swapped Arland with James Ussher.

In conclusion, evidence indicates that Peter Ustinov crafted the expression under investigation. The confusion between Ustinov and Ussher might have been facilitated by spatial proximity on a book page.

(This post was inspired by a wonderful email from Victoria Solt Dennis. She identified the spurious ascription to Ussher, and she also proposed the most likely error mechanism to explain the mistake. In the past, QI has seen other examples of incorrect assignments that fit this pattern. But acknowledgment goes to Dennis for discovering and diagnosing this misattribution. Great thanks to her for an entertaining missive.)

[TLJU] 2011 June 16, The Times (London), Section: Diary, The Last Word, Page 34, London. (LexisNexis Academic)

[TOPU] 1955 March 13, The Observer (UK), Table Talk by Pendennis, Subsection: Sayings of the Week, London. (Guardian/Observer ProQuest) (Many thanks to Mike at Duke for verifying this data)

[PGPU] 1977 [reprint of 1976 revision of 1971 edition] The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations edited by J.M Cohen and M.J. Cohen, Section Peter Ustinov, Page 231, Penguin Books, New York. (Verified on paper)

[OXPU] 2008, Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations edited by Ned Sherrin, Category: Humour, Page 168, Oxford University Press, New York. (Verified on paper)

[QCAL] 1997, Dictionary of Quotations in Communications, Compiled by Lilless McPherson Shilling and Linda K. Fuller, Page 107, Greenwood Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, Connecticut. (Google Books preview)

Dear Quote Investigator: There is a remarkably insightful statement about self-esteem that is usually credited to Eleanor Roosevelt, the diplomat and former First Lady:

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

This is one of my favorite quotations, but I have not been able to determine when it was first said. One quotation dictionary claimed that the saying was in the autobiography “This is My Story” by Roosevelt, but I was unable to find it.

Did Eleanor Roosevelt really say this? Could you tell me where I can locate this quotation?

Quote Investigator: This popular aphorism is the most well-known guidance ascribed to Roosevelt. Quotation experts such as Rosalie Maggio and Ralph Keyes have explored the origin of this saying. Surprisingly, a thorough examination of the books the First Lady authored and her other archived writings has failed to discover any instances of the quote [QVFI].

Yet, the saying has been attributed to Roosevelt for more than seventy years. The earliest example located by QI appeared in the pages of the widely-distributed periodical Reader’s Digest in September of 1940 [RDFI]:

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Thus, from the beginning the phrase was credited to Roosevelt. However, no supporting reference was given in the magazine, and the quote stood alone at the bottom of a page with unrelated article text above it.

Recently, QI located some intriguing evidence, and he now believes that the creation of this maxim can be traced back to comments made by Eleanor Roosevelt about an awkward event in 1935. The Secretary of Labor in the Roosevelt administration was invited to give a speech at the University of California, Berkeley on the Charter Day of the school. The customary host of the event was unhappy because she felt that the chosen speaker should not have been a political figure. She refused to serve as the host and several newspaper commentators viewed her action as a rebuff and an insult.

Eleanor Roosevelt was asked at a White House press conference whether the Secretary had been snubbed, and her response was widely disseminated in newspapers. Here is an excerpt from an Associated Press article [ERNC]:

“A snub” defined the first lady, “is the effort of a person who feels superior to make someone else feel inferior. To do so, he has to find someone who can be made to feel inferior.”

She made clear she didn’t think the labor secretary fell within the category of the “snubable.”

Note that this statement by Roosevelt in 1935 contained the key elements of the quotation that was assigned to her by 1940. One person may try to make a second person feel inferior, but this second person can resist and simply refuse to feel inferior. In this example, the labor secretary refused to consent to feel inferior.

The precise wording given for Roosevelt’s statement varied. Here is another example that was printed in a syndicated newspaper column called “So They Say!” the following week. The columnist stated that the following was the definition of a “snub” given by Roosevelt [OWFI]:

I think it is the effort of a person who feels superior to make someone else feel inferior. First, though, you have to find someone who can be made to feel inferior.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Sometime between 1935 and 1940 Eleanor Roosevelt’s commentary was reformulated into the elegant aphorism that was published in the Reader’s Digest. Roosevelt may have done this herself. Alternatively, someone else decided to render her remarks compactly and stylishly [RDFI]:

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The next month, in October of 1940 the saying appeared as the first line of an editorial in a newspaper from Iowa. The words were placed between quotation marks, but no attribution was given [LPFI]:

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”

That is a good thing to remember. If you feel uncertain of yourself, it is a good pointer to remember. If you feel uncertain of yourself, it is easy to make you feel inferior by making a slighting remark. But if you feel confident you can laugh it off.

At the end of October the maxim appeared freestanding in an Alaskan newspaper where it was credited to Roosevelt [FDFI]:

Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

In June of 1941 the aphorism appeared on a newspaper page dedicated to the topics of “Home, Church, Religion, Character” within a column titled “Sermonograms”. The words were credited to Eleanor Roosevelt [HNFI].

In February of 1944 the saying appeared in the widely-read syndicated column of Walter Winchell where it was again credited to Roosevelt [WWF1]. In February 1945 the maxim was repeated in Winchell’s influential column. On this second occasion Winchell employed a word from his specialized vocabulary, “Frixample”, in the introduction [WWF2]:

Mrs. F.D.R. can turn out punchlines with the best of ‘em. Frixample: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”

The Yale Book of Quotations, an essential reference, contains a compelling precursor to the quote under investigation listed as a cross-index term. More than one-hundred years before the cites above, in 1838, the American clergyman William Ellery Channing said the following [YWEC] [SWEC]:

No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.

In conclusion, QI believes that Eleanor Roosevelt can be credited with expressing the core idea of this saying by 1935. Within five years the graceful modern version of the maxim was constructed. QI does not know if Roosevelt or someone else was responsible for this. But QI does believe Roosevelt’s words were the most likely inspiration.

[QVFI] 2006, The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes, Page 97-98, St Martin’s Griffin, New York. (Verified on paper)

[RDFI] 1940 September, The Reader’s Digest, [Free standing quotation], Page 84, Volume 37, The Reader’s Digest Association. (Verified on paper)

[ERNC] 1935 March 26, News And Courier, Heart Balm Suit Ban Given Support By Mrs. Roosevelt, Page 7, Charleston, South Carolina. (Google News Archive)

[OWFI] 1935 April 2, Owosso Argus-Press, So They Say!, Page 4, Column 4, Owosso, Michigan. (Google News Archive)

[LPFI] 1940 October 10, Lake Park News, The Little Newsance: Editorial by Ardell Proctor, Page 7, Column 1, Lake Park, Iowa. (NewspaperArchive)

[FDFI] 1940 October 30, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, [Free standing quotation], Page 2, Column 1, Fairbanks, Alaska. (NewspaperArchive)

[HNFI] 1941 June 6, Huntingdon Daily News, Sermonograms, Page 11, Column 2, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. (NewspaperArchive)

[WWF1] 1944 February 29, Augusta Chronicle, Walter Winchell: In New York: Notes of an Innocent Bystander, Page 4, Column 7, Augusta, Georgia. (GenealogyBank)

[WWF2] 1945 February 25, St. Petersburg Times, Walter Winchell, Page 24, Column 7, St. Petersburg, Florida. (Google News archive)

[YWEC] 2006, The Yale Book of Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro, Section: William Ellery Channing, Page 143, Yale University Press, New Haven. (Verified on paper)

[SWEC] 1838 [Address delivered in Boston in September 1838], Self-Culture: An Address Introductory to the Franklin Lectures, Page 80, Dutton and Wentworth, Printers, Boston, Massachusetts. (Google Books full view) link

Dear Quote Investigator: I was planning to end a letter with the following remark:

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

But the number of different people credited with this comment is so numerous that an explanatory appendix would have been required, and the letter was already too long. Here is a partial list of attributions I have seen: Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Voltaire, Blaise Pascal, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Winston Churchill, Pliny the Younger, Cato, Cicero, Bill Clinton, and Benjamin Franklin. Did anybody in this group really say it?

Quote Investigator: Some of the attributions you have listed are spurious, but several are supported by solid evidence. The first known instance in the English language was a sentence translated from a text written by the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. The French statement appeared in a letter in a collection called “Lettres Provinciales” in the year 1657 [YQBP] [QVBP] [OXBP]:

Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.

Here is one possible modern day translation of Pascal’s statement. Note that the term “this” refers to the letter itself.

I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.

An English translation was created in 1658 and published in London. Here is an excerpt from that early rendition of the letter [LPBP]:

My Letters were not wont to come so close one in the neck of another, nor yet to be so large. The short time I have had hath been the cause of both. I had not made this longer than the rest, but that I had not the leisure to make it shorter then it is.

Pascal’s notion was quite memorable, and it was discussed in a French book about language. That work was translated and published in London in 1676 as “The Art of Speaking” [ASBP]:

These Inventions require much wit, and application; and therefore it was, that Mons. Pascal (an Author very famous for his felicity in comprising much in few words) excused himself wittily for the extravagant length of one of his Letters, by saying, he had not time to make it shorter.

In 1688 a religious controversialist named George Tullie included a version of the witticism in an essay he wrote about the celibacy of the clergy [CCGT]:

The Reader will I doubt too soon discover that so large an interval of time was not spent in writing this discourse; the very length of it will convince him, that the writer had not time enough to make a shorter.

Below are listed several variations of the expression as used by well known, lesser known, and unknown individuals. The philosopher John Locke, the statesman Benjamin Franklin, the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, and the President Woodrow Wilson all presented statements matching this theme and the details are provided.

Mark Twain who is often connected to this saying did not use it according to the best available research, but one of his tangentially related quotations is given later for your entertainment.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In 1688 “A Geographical Dictionary” by Edmund Bohun was published. This reference work presented an alphabetically list of cities, towns, rivers, mountains and other locations together with descriptions. The author crafted the following variant of the remark [GDEB]:

The Reader may pardon this long Discourse, because the Subject so well deserved it, and I wanted Art to make it shorter.

In 1690 the philosopher John Locke released his famous work “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” with a prefatory section called “The Epistle to the Reader”. Locke commented on the length of his essay and indicated why he decided not to shorten it [EHJL]:

I will not deny, but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower Compass than it is; and that some Parts of it might be contracted: The way it has been writ in, by Catches, and many long Intervals of Interruption, being apt to cause some Repetitions. But to confess the Truth, I am now too lazy, or too busy to make it shorter.

In 1704 the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London printed a letter from William Cowper that contained the following [RSWC]:

If in this I have been tedious, it may be some excuse, I had not time to make it shorter.

In 1750 Benjamin Franklin composed a letter describing his groundbreaking experiments involving electricity and sent it to a member of the Royal Society in London. Franklin excused the length of his report as follows [EEBF]:

I have already made this paper too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter.

The quotation is sometimes attached to famous figures in antiquity. For example, in 1824 a version of the quote was assigned to the Roman orator Cicero [HAMC]:

Cicero excuses himself for having written a long letter, by saying he had not time to make it shorter.

The German theologian Martin Luther died in 1546. A biographical work published in London in 1846 attributed the following words to him [TTML]:

If I had my time to go over again, I would make my sermons much shorter, for I am conscious they have been too wordy.

In 1857 Henry David Thoreau wrote a letter to a friend that offered commentary about story length [LVHT]:

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

In 1871 Mark Twain wrote a letter to a friend that included a remark about the length of his note. Twain’s comment did not really match the quotation under investigation but it is related to the general theme [JRMT]:

You’ll have to excuse my lengthiness—the reason I dread writing letters is because I am so apt to get to slinging wisdom & forget to let up. Thus much precious time is lost.

Woodrow Wilson who died in 1924 was asked by a member of his cabinet about the amount of time he spent preparing speeches [RQWW]:

It depends. If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.

In conclusion, Blaise Pascal wrote a version of this saying in French and it quickly moved into the English language. The notion was very popular and variants of the expression have been employed by other notable figures in history. The saying has also been assigned to some prominent individuals without adequate factual support.

(The investigation was motivated by an inquiry from a brilliant and entertaining writer who is also a strong leader of a writing group in Florida.)

[YQBP] 2006, The Yale Book of Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro, Section: Blaise Pascal, Page 583, Yale University Press, New Haven. (Verified on paper)

[QVBP] 2006, The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes, Page 119-120, St Martin’s Griffin, New York. (Verified on paper)

[OXBP] Oxford Dictionary of Quotations edited by Elizabeth Knowles, Section: Blaise Pascal, Oxford Reference Online, Oxford University Press. (Accessed  March 27, 2012)

[LPBP] 1658, Les Provinciales, or, The Mystery of Jesuitisme by Blaise Pascal, [Translated into English], Second Edition Corrected, Page 292, Letter 16: Postscript, [Letter addressed to Reverend Fathers from Blaise Pascal], Printed for Richard Royston, London. (Google Books full view) link

[ASBP] 1676, The Art of Speaking, Written in French by Messieurs Du Port Royal: In Pursuance of a former Treatise, Intitled, The Art of Thinking, Rendred into English, Page 8, Printed by W. Godbid, London. (Google Books full view) link

[CCGT] 1688, An Answer to a Discourse Concerning the Celibacy of the Clergy by George Tullie, Preface, [Page 2 of Preface; unnumbered], Oxford, Printed at the Theater for Richard Chiswell, London. (Google Books full view) link

[GDEB] 1688, A Geographical Dictionary, Representing the Present and Ancient Names of all the Countries, Provinces, Remarkable Cities, …, Of the Whole World by Edmund Bohun, [Page unnumbered], Page Header: AT, Column 2,  Printed for Charles Brome, London. (Google Books full view) link

[EHJL] 1714, The Works of John Locke Esq: In Three Volumes, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, [Essay originally published in 1690], The Epistle to the Reader, Page vii, Printed for John Churchill, London. (Google Books full view) link

[RSWC] 1706 [1704 March and April issue], Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, A Letter to Dr. Edward Tyson from William Cowper, Start Page 1576, Quote Page 1586, Printed for S. Smith and B. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, London. (Google Books full view) link

[EEBF] 1754, New Experiments and Observations on Electricity Made at Philadelphia in America by Benjamin Franklin, Second Edition, Part I, [Letter to Peter Collinson from Benjamin Franklin; Dated July 29, 1750], Start Page 50, Quote Page 82, Printed and sold by D. Henry and R. Cave, London. (Google Books full view) link

[HAMC] 1824 August, The Harmonicon: A Journal of Music, Number 20, Signor Rossini and Signor Carpani, Start Page 153, Quote Page 156, Published by William Pinnock, Music Warehouse, London. (Google Books full view) link

[TTML] 1846, The Life of Luther: Written By Himself, Collected and Arranged by M. Michelet, [Translated by William Hazlitt], Table Talk – Preaching, Page 293, Published by David Bogue, London. (Google Books full view) link

[LVHT] 1879, Letters to Various Persons by Henry David Thoreau, [Letter dated November 16, 1857 to Mr. B:  Harrison Blake], Start Page 161, Quote Page 165, Riverside Press, Cambridge, Houghton, Osgood, and Company, Boston. (Google Books full view) link

[JRMT] 1871 June 15, Letter from Mark Twain to James Redpath, Elmira, New York, UCCL 00617 (Union Catalog of Clemens Letters), Mark Twain Project Online. (Accessed marktwainproject.org on 2012 April 24) link

[RQWW] 1989, Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations edited by Suzy Platt, Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Research Service. [Attribution: 1946, "The Wilson Era: Years of War and After" by Josephus Daniels, Page 624] (Accessed Online at Bartleby.com on April 28, 2012) link

Dear Quote Investigator: Everyone who works in the area formed by the intersection of education and technology has probably seen a hilarious collection of quotations that outlines the remarkable historical changes in education. Last month I saw these quotes, yet again, in a slide show. The first one starts with this sentence:

Students today can’t prepare bark to calculate their problems.

Usually there are six or seven quotes organized chronologically. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find solid citations for any of these quotes. Can you help?

Quote Investigation: This set of statements was printed in the Fall 1978 issue of “The MATYC Journal”, a publication that focused on mathematics education. The quotes were assigned the dates: 1703, 1815, 1907, 1929, 1941, and 1950. But they may actually have been created in 1978. Copies of these quotes have been widely distributed and posted on many websites. They also have been published in multiple books and periodicals.

In 1978 the words were placed in a journal section called “Viewpoints” and the title displayed was “Probable Quotes From History”. The use of the word “probable” signaled that these quotes were constructed with a humorous intent. Here are the first three quotes and the final sentence [PQMJ]:

“Students today can’t prepare bark to calculate their problems. They depend upon their slates which are more expensive. What will they do when the slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to write!”  Teachers’ Conference, 1703

“Students today depend upon paper too much. They don’t know how to write on a slate without getting chalk dust all over themselves. They can’t clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper?” Principals Association, 1815

“Students today depend too much upon ink. They don’t know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pencil. Pen and ink will never replace the pencil!” National Association of Teachers, 1907

…

“Today’s students depend too much on handheld calculators . . .

This post continues with additional analysis and citations in chronological order.

Several of the quotes begin with the phrase “Students today”. This is a stylistic technique that provides a parallel structure which emphasizes the continuity of the series. It also highlights the changes of each historical era. QI believes that it is unlikely that real quotations would conform to this convenient pattern.

In addition, QI has searched several massive full-text databases for evidence of these words before 1978, and QI was unable to locate any previous citations in the time periods indicated.

The author name listed after these quotes in 1978 was Gene Zirkel of Nassau Community College who was an editor of the MATYC journal. He taught and wrote extensively about mathematics and computers. QI believes that Zirkel should probably be credited with the creation of these quotes. QI also thinks there was no intention to deceive. The piece was supposed to reflect technological and attitudinal changes with a clever satirical edge.

Many periodicals and books have treated the quotes as genuine. For example, in 1988 a Florida newspaper printed this [OSCA]:

Teachers at a conference in 1703 complained that their students depended on slates and could not ”prepare bark” to calculate their problems with notches.

They didn’t believe in change, said Romanger J. Fredericks, supervisor of Mathematics and Compensatory Education for the Volusia County school district.

In 1929, a teacher blamed students for using store-bought ink and not knowing how to make their own.

And it was in 1959 that a teacher said, ”Ballpoint pens will be the ruin of education.”

The reader can use Google to locate many more examples of these quotations being presented without a cautionary note. Indeed, many modern readers find the words plausible.

In some cases the quote collection has been updated with the additional material. Here is an appended quote [BSCA]:

Students who are continually allowed to do word processing on a computer are not given enough handwriting practice.  Without practice using pencils and pens, students’ handwriting will become illegible.  Handwritten work should continue to be an essential part of a student’s education.  What happens when there is no computer available? – SOME TEACHERS TODAY – THE 21st CENTURY

In conclusion, QI hypothesizes that these quotations were synthesized around 1978, and Gene Zirkel was the likely creator. The set has evolved over time, and sometimes novel quotes are annexed to the list.

(The construction of this query and the initiation of this exploration were motivated by a tweet from Andrew Old.)

[PQMJ] 1978 Fall, The MATYC Journal [Mathematics Associations of Two-year Colleges journal], Volume 12, Number 3, Section: Viewpoints, Article Title: Probable Quotes From History, Page 189, MATYC Journal, Inc., Garden City, New York. (Verified with scans; Many thanks to the University of Georgia Science Library especially the helpful Reference Librarian. This librarian pointed out that the repeated phrase “Students today…” provided evidence of the artificiality of the quotes.)

[OSCA] 1988 April 13, The Orlando Sentinel, Section: Volusia Sentinel, Calculators: Adding Up For Students by Pat LaMee, Page 1, Orlando, Florida, Sentinel Communications Co. (Newsbank Access World News)

[BSCA] CharacterAccess webpage, Title: “It’s Been Said”, [This version of the list of quotations included an acknowledgement to The Oneida County Historical Society] (Accessed at characteraccess.com April 21, 2012)

Dear Quote investigator: All the rules and regulations of the modern world can be quite aggravating. That is why I greatly enjoy the following quotation proclaimed by Thomas Edison to the employees in his Menlo Park laboratory:

Hell, there are no rules here. We’re trying to accomplish something.

I read this statement in a book published in 2000, but an exact reference was not given. Did Edison really say this?

Quote Investigator: Yes, he probably did make a comment like this to one of his researchers. The evidence was published in the September 1932 issue of Harper’s Magazine which contained an article titled “Edison in His Laboratory” by Martin André Rosanoff who performed chemical investigations for Edison. Rosanoff described an exchange he had with Edison shortly after he had joined the staff around 1903 [HMLR]:

I approached him in a humble spirit: “Mr. Edison, please tell me what laboratory rules you want me to observe.” And right then and there I got my first surprise. He spat in the middle of the floor and yelled out,

“Hell! there ain’t no rules around here! We are tryin’ to accomplish somep’n!”

And he walked off, leaving me flabbergasted.

Note that the original printed quotation used the informal contraction “ain’t” instead of “are no”. Also, dialect spellings were employed for “tryin’” and “somep’n”.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Edison died in 1931 about a year before the Harper’s article excerpted above was published.

In 1947 the New York Times printed a profile of Edison titled “Scientist-Magician Who Reshaped a World” and part of the quotation was presented [NYLR]:

When he asked what were the laboratory rules the answer was: “Hell, there ain’t no rules around here.” But there were rules just the same, or rather unwritten principles to which all submitted. If Edison worked, so did everybody, regardless of the time of day or night.

In 1959 the periodical Popular Science presented the anecdote, and the quotation credited to Edison was nearly identical to the 1932 version [PSLR]:

A Russian-born, Paris-trained chemist named Martin André Rosanoff, whom Edison engaged on the spur of the moment, reported for work early one morning in 1903.

Respectfully, Rosanoff asked to be informed about the laboratory rules and regulations. Edison spat on the floor (he was chewing tobacco) and said, “Hell, there ain’t no rules around here! We’re tryin’ to accomplish somep’n.”

In 1996 the public relations director of the Reader’s Digest Association used the following regularized version of the saying [ESLR]:

But, I must confess, I prefer what that great innovator Thomas Edison said about the matter: “Hell, there are no rules here. We’re trying to accomplish something.”

In conclusion, the correctness of this quotation rests on the accuracy of the memory of Martin André Rosanoff. QI thinks that if the incident occurred then it was probably quite memorable for Rosanoff.

[HMLR] 1932 September, Harper’s Magazine, Volume 165, Edison in His Laboratory by M. A. Rosanoff, Start Page 402, Quote Page 403, Column 2, Harper & Brothers, New York. (Verified on microfilm)

[NYLR] 1947 February 9, New York Times, Scientist-Magician Who Reshaped a World by Waldemar Kaempffert, Start Page SM12, Quote Page SM47, New York. (ProQuest)

[PSLR] 1959 December, Popular Science, Volume 175, Number 6, Struggle to Build a Better Battery, Page 134, Published by Bonnier Corporation, New York. (Google Books full view) link

[ESLR] 1996 October-November, Executive Speeches,Volume 11, Issue 2, Customer communications: Building lasting customer loyalty, [Remarks by Craig Lowder: public relations director of the Reader's Digest Association, Inc., Presented at the Corporate Communications Conference sponsored by the Conference Board in New York City on April 25, 1996], The Executive Speaker. (ProQuest ABI/INFORM Complete)