Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Attribution ·211 of 348
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
They never said that.
What people say
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
What was actually said
"No one in this world, so far as I know … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." H. L. Mencken — Chicago Tribune column, 19 September 1926
Why it stuck
Mencken's original is 25 words; the compressed form is 12. The original is a careful sentence with hedges ("so far as I know," "the great masses," "plain people"); the compression loses all of them.
Mencken is routinely miscredited with the P. T. Barnum misquote "A sucker is born every minute" as well. He did not say either in those forms.
Know another line by heart?
Play the duel and see how many you can spot. Or browse the whole shelf.