Quote Investigator

Ogden Nash? George Bernard Shaw? La Liberté? Winston Churchill? Oscar Wilde? Georges Clemenceau?

Dear Quote Investigator: There is a famous humorous saying about the United States that has been credited to four celebrated wits: George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, and Georges Clemenceau:

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without knowing civilization.

Could you reduce the uncertainty and determine who coined this acerbic comment?

Quote Investigator: A version of this statement appeared in several U.S. newspapers in July 1932. This is the earliest evidence located by QI, but none of the four gentlemen mentioned above were credited. The Washington Post of July 16, 1932 included the following English translation of a passage that appeared originally in the French newspaper La Liberté. The French paper was unhappy with statements made by the American President Herbert Hoover [WPLL]:

Does this government, which obeys gangsters, which capitulates helplessly before thieves and assassins of babies in the cradle, dare to assume such a height of moral authority that it thinks it can dictate to Europe and France?

Americans are the only race which passed directly from barbarism to decadence without knowing civilization.

The name of the French author was not specified in the Washington Post or in other publications that reprinted the words of La Liberté. The remark may have originated as an unsigned editorial comment from the pages of La Liberté.

In 1934 a modified version of the saying was assigned to the prominent literary figure John O’Hara in the magazine The Golden Book. Thanks to sharp researcher Victor Steinbok for pointing out this citation [GBJO]:

John O’Hara: sees us hurdling through

“America has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.”

For more than a decade the ascription usually given for versions of this phrase was to La Liberté or to an anonymous figure labeled: “a French journalist,” “a foreign wit,” “an overseas critic,” or “one of those witty Frenchmen.”

In 1945 Hans Bendix, a noted Danish illustrator and cartoonist, wrote an essay in the Saturday Review of Literature about his sojourn in the United States. Bendix presented a variant of the remark using the word “degeneration” instead of “decadence”. The phrase was actually pronounced by his cantankerous aunt who did not want him to go to the United States, and the saying was attributed to the French statesmen Georges Clemenceau [SRGC]:

… when I had decided to go to America, my aunt went to work on me. I would lose my shirt, she insisted, in a country where drink, gambling, adultery, and gangsterism flourished. Most of 5,000,000 Ku Kluxers would meet the “furriner” at the dock, with a noose. She reminded me of Clemenceau’s saying, “America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”

The above citation is well-known, and it has been used to rationalize the attachment of the quotation to Clemenceau, but this text was printed thirteen years after the appearance of the adage, and the evidence provided is rather weak. QI has not located any direct evidence for assigning the words to Clemenceau at this time.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

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