Quote Origin: Thinking Is the Hardest Work Many People Ever Have To Do, and They Don’t Like To Do Any More of It Than They Can Help

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Henry Ford? G. K. Chesterton? Robert R. Updegraff? Charles Zueblin? Anonymous?

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Question for Quote Investigator: Thinking carefully and rigorously about an issue requires major effort. That helps to explain why shallow, lazy, and self-justifying thought is so common. Here is a pertinent quotation: 

Thinking is the hardest work many people ever have to do, and they don’t like to do any more of it than they can help.

This notion has been attributed to U.S. automobile titan Henry Ford and U.S. sociologist Charles Zueblin. Would you please trace this expression?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1916 advertising specialist Robert R. Updegraff published a short book titled “Obvious Adams: The Story of a Successful Businessman” which included the quotation; however, Updegraff credited the statement to Charles Zueblin. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1

… I guess Professor Zueblin is right when he says that thinking is the hardest work many people ever have to do, and they don’t like to do any more of it than they can help. They look for a royal road through some short cut in the form of a clever scheme or stunt, which they call the obvious thing to do; but calling it doesn’t make it so. They don’t gather all the facts and then analyze them before deciding what really is the obvious thing, and thereby they overlook the first and most obvious of all business principles.

QI has not yet found this quotation in the works of Zueblin. Updegraff did not use quotation marks, and he may have been paraphrasing Zueblin. Alternatively, Updegraff’s memory may have been flawed.

Henry Ford did say something similar in 1922 and 1928. Perhaps Ford was influenced by Updegraff’s earlier statement. See the 1922 and 1928 citations listed further below.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Multiple precursors appeared during the decades before Updegraff’s book. For example, an 1855 speech delivered by Franklin Minor to the Virginia State Agricultural Society contained the following:2

Thinking is the hardest work men have to do, and hence we have so few real thinkers.

In 1877 another precursor appeared in a Kansas City, Kansas newspaper which published remarks from Jonas Fitzbaron who was the “head of a flourishing manufacturing business in Boston”:3

Thinking is the hardest work that’s done in the world, and the most commonly shirked, therefore.

In 1889 “The World” newspaper of New York printed the following within an article by an unnamed journalist:4

Real thinking is the hardest work in the world, and that is the reason, probably, why there is so little of it done.

In 1914 the prominent English literary figure G. K. Chesterton published an essay containing a thematically germane comment in “The Illustrated London News”:5

Mr. Wilson, like M. Poincaré, belongs to the small group of honestly strong men who think before they act, for thinking is the hardest work in the world, and the most repugnant to our nature. Therefore the lazier sort of politician takes refuge in activity. The Superman, the Man of Action, acts before he thinks: he has to do his thinking afterwards.

In 1916 Robert R. Updegraff published “Obvious Adams” in the popular magazine “The Saturday Evening Post”. Thus, his work and the quotation achieved wide circulation.6

In 1917 “The American Printer” periodical of New York reprinted an excerpt from Updegraff’s book:7

A small volume popular among advertising men is “Obvious Adams,” by Robert R. Updegraff. It is the story of the development of a grocer boy who became interested in advertising and whose common-sense logic brought success in a race with brilliancy and cleverness . . .

Obvious Adams answering a question “Why don’t more business men do the obvious,” said “Since I had that name wished upon me I have given considerable thought to that very question, and I have decided that picking out the obvious thing presupposes analysis, and analysis presupposes thinking, and I guess Professor Zueblin is right when he says that thinking is the hardest work many people ever have to do, and they don’t like to do any more of it than they can help.

In 1920 “Advertising and Selling” reported on a speech delivered by Updegraff during which he employed a thematically related remark:8

“You can’t get ideas for advertising copy unless you dig for them,” Robert R. Updegraff, late copy director of the Erickson Company, New York, told the several hundred members of the Triad League assembled at the Advertising Club last Saturday evening. “Thinking is the hardest thing we do—we hate to think,” he said, and proceeded to describe four methods by which copy ideas might be secured with the aid of a little well directed mental power.

In 1922 Henry Ford published his autobiography “My Life and Work” in collaboration with Samuel Crowther. The book included a remark similar to the comment printed in 1856 which was presented previously:9

A man who cannot think is not an educated man however many college degrees he may have acquired. Thinking is the hardest work any one can do—which is probably the reason why we have so few thinkers.

In April 1928 “The Forum” published an interview with Henry Ford who commented on the apparent increase in the complexity and rapidity of life. Ford was skeptical about whether there had been a commensurate increase in thought:10

But there is a question in my mind whether, with all this speeding up of our everyday activities, there is any more real thinking. Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.

A separate Quote Investigator article about Ford’s quotation is available here.

In 1981 “The Rotarian” published a piece titled “Woke up…to the obvious!” which contained material from Updegraff including the following:11

“Thinking is the hardest work many people ever have to do, and they don’t like to do any more of it than they can help. They look for a shortcut in the form of a clever scheme or stunt, which they call the obvious thing to do; but calling it doesn’t make it so.”

In conclusion, Robert R. Updegraff employed this quotation in his 1916 book “Obvious Adams”; however, Updegraff credited Charles Zueblin. QI has not yet found any direct evidence that Zueblin wrote or said this quotation. Interesting precursors appeared in the nineteenth century. Henry Ford made similar points in 1922 and 1928. It is likely that Ford was influenced by earlier remarks.

Acknowledgement: Special thanks to Todd Gorman, Rodney Anderson, and Jeremy Mills who all told QI about the quotation attributed to Charles Zueblin in Robert R. Updegraff’s 1916 work “Obvious Adams”. Also thanks to Barry Popik for his previous exploration of this topic.

Image Notes: One illuminated lightbulb in a group of lightbulbs. This image is from qimono at Pixabay. It has been cropped and resized.

Update History: On September 29, 2024 the 1922 citation was added to the article. Also, the conclusion was revised, and the acknowledgement was updated.

  1. 1916 Copyright, Obvious Adams: The Story of a Successful Businessman by Robert R. Updegraff (Robert Rawls Updegraff), Quote Page 50 and 51, Harper & Brothers, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
  2. 1856 April, The Arator, Extracts From the Address of Franklin Minor, Esq., Before the Virginia State Agricultural Society at Its Fair, November 1855, Start Page 411, Quote Page 413, Column 1, Raleigh, North Carolina. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
  3. 1877 September 14, The Wyandotte Gazette, The Man Who Knew Men: A Character Sketch, Quote Page 1, Column 1, Kansas City, Kansas. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
  4. 1889 August 28, The World Evening Edition, The Inventor’s Genius, Quote Page 2, Column 3, New York, New York. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
  5. 1914 September 26, The Illustrated London News, Our Notebook by G. K. Chesterton, Quote Page 2, Column 2, London, England. (British Newspaper Archive) ↩︎
  6. 1916 April 1, The Saturday Evening Post, Volume 188, Number 40, Obvious Adams: The Story of a Successful Businessman by Robert R. Updegraff, Start Page 20, Quote Page 85, The Curtis Publishing Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
  7. 1917 August 5, The American Printer, Volume 65, Number 3, Quote Page 47, Column 1, What We Find in Books, Success Through the Obvious, Quote Page 47, Column 1, Oswald Publishing Company, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
  8. 1920 November 20, Advertising and Selling, Volume 30, Number 22, Updegraff Tells Triaders How to Get Copy Ideas, Quote Page 17, Advertising and Selling Company, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
  9. 1922 Copyright, My Life and Work by Henry Ford in collaboration with Samuel Crowther, Chapter 17: Things In General, Quote Page 247, Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
  10. 1928 April, The Forum, Volume 79, Number 4, My Philosophy of Industry by Henry Ford, Interview conducted by Fay Leone Faurote, Start Page 481, Quote Page 481, The Forum Publishing Company, New York. (Internet Archive Full View) link ↩︎
  11. 1981 March, The Rotarian, Woke up…to the obvious! by Robert R. Updegraff, Start Page 12, Quote Page 13, Rotary International, Evanston, Illinois. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
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