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

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.
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