"Great minds think alike"

[Michael Quinion]

> Does anyone know the origin or earliest usage in English of "great
> minds think alike" or "great minds tend to think alike"?  It's not
> in my Bartlett's (15th edition).  The Columbia World of Quotations
> (1996) gives "all great heroes think alike" as a Chinese proverb.

Newspaperarchive.com has an example from the Paxton Weekly Record of
24 Dec. 1874, in which it is described as an adage.

--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: <wordseditor at worldwidewords.org>
Web: <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>