Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy compiled Azbuka, an ABC book for Russian children, in the same years he was writing his great novels; the Internet Archive holds a St. Petersburg printing of 1874, and page 48 carries the bald-men line as the moral of a two-sentence exchange about an illiterate pair squabbling over a book. He was working in the register of the folk proverb there, gathering sayings and riddles for children to learn from — which is precisely why Quote Investigator concludes he was relaying an expression that already existed rather than minting one. The credit stuck anyway: within fifteen years American newspapers were printing the story with Tolstoy’s name attached, and it has travelled under his name ever since.