"It’s Easier To Fool People Than To Convince Them That They’ve Been Fooled" needs true source

Leifer

Leifer

Senior Member.

"It's Easier To Fool People Than To Convince Them That They've Been Fooled"

.....has been attributed to Mark Twain, but online people cannot find a specific Twain source.

Quote Investigator says...
Quote Investigator: QI has found no substantive evidence that Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) authored this remark. The earliest close match known to QI appeared in a tweet from @Joreth on January 10, 2011.......
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and further down they cite a similar quote, where in 1647 Baltasar Gracián wrote "Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia" ("The Art of Worldly Wisdom") which included a germane discussion of fools stubbornly clinging to incorrect beliefs:
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Every blockhead is thoroughly persuaded that he is in the right, and every one who is all too firmly persuaded is a blockhead, and the more erroneous is his judgment the greater is the tenacity with which he holds it.
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I'm curious to find the correct source, because it is a neat, but unfortunate idea.
 
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without reading the book, i dont really think his meaning is the same... but this line out of context is maybe close.

"How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!" – Autobiographical dictation, 2 December 1906. Published in Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 (University of California Press, 2013)

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https://www.google.com/books/edition/Autobiography_of_Mark_Twain_Volume_2/HXQKAQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq= lie
 
I like what you found, Deirdre.. That is very close.
I doubt there is a translation issue, because Mr Clemens wrote in english...and here we are.
Perhaps someone simplified it at some point.... and therefore the simplified version, stuck.
(it got dumbed-down for an easy internet swallow.)
 
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This reminded me of the saying (in various wordings) that a lie will travel round the world before the truth can get its boots on. This one has also been attributed to Mark Twain, who seems to be a quote-magnet like Einstein or Churchill. In fact it is at least a few decades older than anything by Mark Twain, as shown in this article by Quote Investigator:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/

[By 'quote-magnet' I mean a famous person to whom quotes are often wrongly attributed, not a fridge magnet with quotes on it, which is apparently a thing.]
 
Leifer said:
Perhaps someone simplified it at some point.
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perhaps someone was being punny. ie fool people with a fake/rewritten quote, then as Twain did say "and how hard to undo that work again"

or she/he just misremembered a quote she/he read in highschool.
 
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