Did Mark Twain say: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they are fooled”?

On the Internet, a phrase about firing people attributed to the American writer widely dispersed. We decided to check if he said something like that.

This quote indicating the authorship of Mark Twain Meet On numerous sites With selection aphorisms and statements of famous people. It is popular in social networks (for example, in "VKontakte"And in Twitter) and blogs ("Zen","Habre" Livejournal). There are many on the Internet pictures With a photograph of Twain and this statement. Sometimes it is included even in Collections quotes of the writer.

The works of the American writer are well studied and digitized. The largest portals where Twain's texts are posted is the archive Mark Twain Projects Onlineassembled with the support of the University of California in Berkeley (USA), base Twain quotes, which includes texts belonging to Peru Mark Twain or dedicated to the writer, and electronic archive Mark Twain, gathered by the library of the University of Virginia (USA). None of these bases “verified” could find the phrase “easier to fool people than to convince them that they are fed” or an analogue close to it.

The earliest case of attributes of this quote (in its English version is “It's Easier to Fool Peopleward to convincion them that they've Been Fooled”) Mark Twain “checked” in Twitter - In the publication of the user with the nickname @sarosinsky in 2011. It was a @joreth user repost, but the original tweet was later removed.

Our colleagues-factchera from Snopes, who also checked the authenticity of this quote, turned to Barbar Schmidt, an independent researcher of Twain’s work and the creator of the Twain Quotes resource. She also did not find evidence that the American writer has any relation to this phrase.

With the fact that Twain never said this, I agree and Matt Sebold -Adjunct professor of American literature at the college of Elmira and a researcher at the Center for Research Mark Twain. He calls himself "a leading expert in shit in the world, which Mark Twain did not say." In his article 2022 he analyzes the English -language options for quotes about firing people from the point of view of vocabulary and indicates that some of the words used in the statement are not found in Twain's texts. In addition, Sebold gives a quote from the 1913 Dexter Dispatch newspaper, which could serve as the original source of the aphorism in question: “It is much easier to fool this class of people (socialists. - approx. Ed.), Than to convince them of the truth.” And she did not belong to Twain at all (by that time he had died for three years), but to the chief editor of the publication named Boldridge.

Nevertheless, Mark Twain had similar thoughts, although not in such a wording. So, in "Chapters from my autobiography"He wrote:" How easy it is to make a person believe in a lie and how difficult it is to abolish what was done later. " In the book "What is a person?"Twain wrote about the search for truth as follows:“ I saw several completely sincere people who considered themselves [constant] seekers of truth. They sought hard, persistently, carefully, carefully, deeply, with perfect honesty and well -verified judgments, until they believed that they found the truth without a doubt and questions. The searches are over. The man spent the rest of his life in search of a roof that would protect his truth from bad weather. ”

Thus, there is no evidence that Mark Twain has ever pronounced or wrote the verified phrase. It is neither in his works, nor in other written sources belonging to the writer's pen. At the same time, there really are similar thoughts in his works, although the formulations are significantly different from the quote under consideration. Unlike many other completely invented quotes attributed to Twain, it is possible that the one who first published this phrase really read the idea from the writer, and then distributed retelling in his own words. 

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

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2. Whether Mark Twain said: “Never argue with idiots. Will you go to their level, where will they crush you with their experience ”?
3. Is it true that Mark Twain is the author of a phrase about three types of lies?
4. Whether Mark Twain said: “Be careful when reading books about health. Can you die from a typo ”?