[Ads-l] Slight Antedating of Lincoln-Attributed Quotation

[Jonathan Lighter]

FWIW, both Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank agree that the quotation
suddenly became vastly popular in 1886, within months of Bascom's letter in
a New York City paper.

This suggests to me that Bascom heard the quote from somebody else, and
that it had had a limited oral circulation before that. Once his letter was
published, it quickly caught on.

Which suggests further that Licoln never said it. Surely if he had,
somebody in his circle would have reported it before 1885.  It's such a
great quote that, also surely, had it been circulating widely before 1885,
esp. with the Lincoln attribution, there would be any number of pre-Bascom
citations.

JL

On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 5:00 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <
00001aa1be50b751-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> The Quote Investigator article on his topic has now been updated with
> the new citation. The QI article includes an acknowledgement. Thanks.
> The changes should be visible now.
>
> Quote Origin: You Cannot Fool All the People All the Time
> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/12/11/cannot-fool/
>
> Feedback welcome
> Garson O'Toole
>
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 2:35 PM ADSGarson O'Toole
> <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Wow! Thanks for sharing a magnificent new 1885 citation, Fred. Now,
> > the earliest known citation attributes the saying to Abraham Lincoln.
> > Admittedly, the attribution evidence is still weak because Lincoln
> > died in 1865. But the new citation is a valuable advance in our
> > knowledge.
> >
> > Garson
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 8:08 AM Shapiro, Fred
> > <00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > The great quotationeer Garson O'Toole pushed back the earliest dating
> for the great Abraham-Lincoln-attributed quotation about fooling all the
> people.  Garson's dating was 9 September 1885 (in a Syracuse newspaper).  I
> used this dating in the New Yale Book of Quotations.
> > >
> > > I have now found a slightly earlier occurrence of the attribution to
> Lincoln:
> > >
> > > 1885 The Voice (New York) 3 Sept. 3 / 4 (Newspapers.com)  Was it not
> Mr. Lincoln who said: "You can fool the people some of the time, and you
> can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the
> people all the time."
> > >
> > > NOTE:  This citation is in a letter to the editor by H. Clay Bascom..
> The letter is dated 24 Aug. 1885.
> > >
> > > Fred Shapiro
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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