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

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

I agree with you, JL, that Lincoln probably did not employ the saying.
Here is the conclusion of the QI article.

[Begin QI conclusion]
In conclusion, Jacques Abbadie should be credited with the interesting
precursor statement in French. QI believes based on current evidence
that Abraham Lincoln probably did not employ this well-known adage.

QI speculates that someone in the prohibitionist movement was exposed
directly or indirectly to the works of Jacques Abbadie or Denis
Diderot. He or she began to use the expression on or before 1885. The
words were reassigned to Lincoln who was revered by many as a moral
paragon.
[End QI conclusion]

Garson

On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 5:08 PM Jonathan Lighter
<00001aad181a2549-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> 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
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------
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> >
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> >
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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