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Who really said it

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers

Not Picasso’s exact words — a 1980s rewrite Pablo Picasso 1881–1973 · Spanish painter and sculptor, co-founder of Cubism
Disputed wording, not disputed speaker — the remark is Picasso’s as recorded, but this exact sentence is a later editor’s tidy-up. In copyright

Picasso did say something very close, and it was written down — but not like this. William Fifield’s Paris Review interview of Summer–Fall 1964 records him remarking, of “the enormous new mechanical brains or calculating machines,” “But they are useless. They can only give you answers.” The word computers appears nowhere in that text; Fifield swapped it in himself in his 1982 book In Search of Genius, and the crisp, de-pronouned sentence spread through reviews, quotation books and magazine quizzes during the 1980s.

Last verified 7 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers” Often quoted as "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." What William Fifield actually printed, in The Paris Review no. 32 (Summer–Fall 1964), p. 62, was Picasso saying of "the enormous new mechanical brains or calculating machines": "But they are useless. They can only give you answers." The word "computers" was introduced by Fifield himself in In Search of Genius (Morrow, 1982); the polished modern sentence spread during the 1980s. — Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by the estate of William Fifield; first published by Paris Review, Inc. (1964) and William Morrow (1982)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Pablo Picasso — Spanish painter and sculptor, co-founder of Cubism. Theme: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the wording actually comes from

Source
Pablo Picasso—A Composite Interview
Published
The Paris Review no. 32, Summer–Fall 1964 — article begins p. 37, remark on p. 62
Recorded by
William Fifield, who assembled the piece from several interviews with Picasso
Popular wording
Not in the 1964 text — “computers” enters with Fifield’s In Search of Genius (Morrow, 1982)

I feel I am nibbling on the edges of this world when I am capable of getting what Picasso means when he says to me—perfectly straight-facedly—later of the enormous new mechanical brains or calculating machines: “But they are useless. They can only give you answers.” How easy and comforting to take these things for jokes—boutades! 1964 — as printed

Fifield’s paragraph from The Paris Review no. 32, p. 62, transcribed from microfilm by Quote Investigator ↗. The magazine’s own online text of the article is cut off by its subscriber wall well before this passage.

Scanned book · Internet Archive
Borrow Fifield’s In Search of Genius (Morrow, 1982)
The Paris Review, Issue 32: “Pablo Picasso—A Composite Interview”

The paper trail, in order

  • Summer–Fall 1964 — the remark first reaches print in William Fifield’s composite interview in The Paris Review no. 32, article beginning p. 37, quote on p. 62. Picasso is speaking of “mechanical brains or calculating machines,” and the sentence begins “But they are useless” (Garson O’Toole’s ADS-L posting, with the passage verbatim ↗).
  • 1967 — the poet Louis Zukofsky folds it into “A”-18, ascribing to “Pablo” the line “art begs disrespect, calculators can only give answers” — still calculators, not computers (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • 1982–1983 — Fifield modernises his own vocabulary in In Search of Genius (Morrow): p. 40 gives “What good are computers? They can only give you answers,” while p. 145 reprints the Paris Review passage with “computers” substituted. A New York Times review on 13 February 1983 picked out the p. 145 version (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • Through the 1980s — the pronoun is dropped and the modern sentence takes hold. Wikiquote records its earliest known book appearance in Herman Feshbach’s essay in Man and Technology (1983), where the attribution is called “rumoured” (Wikiquote ↗); by May 1986 it was the answer to a magazine quiz question in Orange Coast (Quote Investigator ↗).
In copyright

Picasso’s remark survives only inside William Fifield’s account of it, and that account is modern: the article ran in The Paris Review no. 32 in 1964 and the book In Search of Genius was published by Morrow in 1982 — both far too recent for the US public domain. Treat the passage as a copyrighted text to be quoted and cited, not as free-standing public-domain wording.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Right man, rewritten sentence

This is not a case of a quote pinned on the wrong person. Picasso really did say it, to a writer who published it in his lifetime. What travelled is a tidied-up version — three separate edits away from the words on the page.

Added by William Fifield in 1982 Wrong word

Quote Investigator states plainly that “the word ‘computer’ did not actually appear in the text written by Fifield.” The 1964 article has Picasso speaking of “the enormous new mechanical brains or calculating machines”; Fifield substituted “computers” when he reused the passage in In Search of Genius (Quote Investigator ↗).

Anonymous 1980s editors Rewritten

The recorded sentence starts with a pronoun — “But they are useless” — and QI notes only that the 1964 phrasing “used a pronoun for the pivotal referent; hence, it was not self-contained.” Nobody has dated the swap itself. The de-pronouned version is in circulation by 1983, Wikiquote’s earliest known book appearance being Herman Feshbach’s essay in Man and Technology (Wikiquote ↗), and QI finds it as a quiz answer in Orange Coast, May 1986 (Quote Investigator ↗).

William Fifield, In Search of Genius, p. 40 Third variant

The same book carries a different opening on an earlier page: “He said contemptuously: ‘What good are computers? They can only give you answers.’ ” That prefatory question is not in the Paris Review text at all, so Fifield left two competing records of the same remark (Quote Investigator ↗).

Louis Zukofsky, “A”-18 (1967) Early derivative

The poet ascribed the line to “Pablo” in a section of his long poem published in 1967, choosing calculators — probably from the “calculating machines” phrasing in the magazine. It is a paraphrase of Fifield’s text, not an independent witness to Picasso (Quote Investigator ↗).

Best available verdict: the remark is genuinely Picasso’s as recorded by Fifield — only the famous wording is not. Quote Investigator’s suggested careful rendering is “[As Pablo Picasso said of computers]: But they are useless. They can only give you answers,” and QI calls the popular version merely “semantically a reasonable match” to what Fifield wrote down (Quote Investigator ↗).

Context

Why this one keeps getting sharper

The line is a small case study in how quotations improve themselves. Fifield’s original is a writer’s aside, buried mid-paragraph and hedged with the observation that it would be “easy and comforting to take these things for jokes.” It leans on a pronoun, it names a technology nobody calls by that name any more, and it is impossible to put on a slide. Each later version fixes one of those problems: Fifield modernised the noun, a reviewer picked the cleaner of his two versions, and somewhere in the 1980s an editor deleted the pronoun and produced the three-word opening everyone now recites.

The irony is that the tidying is exactly what the remark is about. A quotation that survives by being rounded off into something more usable is a quotation being handed an answer rather than a question. Quote Investigator’s 2011 dig into it was prompted by an email from Kevin Kelly of Wired, who had noticed that Fifield’s own book carried two different versions of the same sentence — the first crack in what had looked like a settled quotation (Quote Investigator ↗).

But they are useless. They can only give you answers.

The three competing versions, side by side

The Paris Review no. 32, Summer–Fall 1964, p. 62 — “…later of the enormous new mechanical brains or calculating machines: ‘But they are useless. They can only give you answers.’ ” This is the earliest evidence located by Quote Investigator, verified on microfilm.

In Search of Genius, Morrow, 1982, p. 40 — “He said contemptuously: ‘What good are computers? They can only give you answers.’ ” Fifield adds that he thought it the most significant single thing he ever heard Picasso say.

In Search of Genius, Morrow, 1982, p. 145 — the Paris Review paragraph again, with “of computers” in place of the machines. This is the version a New York Times reviewer reprinted on 13 February 1983, and the version The Yale Book of Quotations (2006) cites.

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Computers Are Useless. They Can Only Give You Answersquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: the 1964 Paris Review passage verified on microfilm, Zukofsky’s 1967 “calculators” version, Fifield’s two 1982 rewrites, the 1983 New York Times review and the 1986 quiz, plus QI’s verdict on the modern phrasing.
Pablo Picasso — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Files the line in its 1960s section as “[Speaking of computers] But they are useless…”, cites the Fifield article, and dates the popular variant to the 1980s with a 1983 book instance where the attribution is called “rumoured”.
Pablo Picasso—A Composite Interviewwww.theparisreview.org

The magazine’s own page for the article, confirming Issue 32, Summer-Fall 1964 and William Fifield’s authorship. The free preview stops before the passage about calculating machines.
ADS-L: Picasso quotation about computers (5 November 2011)listserv.linguistlist.org

Garson O’Toole’s posting to the American Dialect Society list reproducing the Paris Review paragraph verbatim with the microfilm citation, and the earlier thread message listing Fifield’s two 1982 versions.
In Search of Genius — William Fifield (Morrow, 1982)archive.org

Scan of the book in which Fifield replaced “mechanical brains” with “computers”, on pages 40 and 145. Borrowing is restricted, but the catalogue record confirms publisher and year.
Pablo Picasso — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography and dates for the artist: born Málaga, 25 October 1881, died Mougins, 8 April 1973; co-founder of Cubism and pioneer of collage.

The speaker

About Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

1881–1973 · Spanish painter and sculptor, co-founder of Cubism

Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga in 1881 and spent most of his working life in France, where he co-founded Cubism and pioneered collage and constructed sculpture. By the early 1960s he was living at Mougins and had become famously hard to reach — Fifield’s piece is a composite — a number of interviews he did with Picasso, with his own observations threaded through. He died at Mougins in 1973, which is why every version of this quotation rests entirely on what someone else wrote down.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented appearance

William Fifield, “Pablo Picasso—A Composite Interview,” The Paris Review no. 32 (Summer–Fall 1964), article beginning p. 37, quote at p. 62 — where the wording is “But they are useless. They can only give you answers,” said of “the enormous new mechanical brains or calculating machines.” The “computers” wording appears later, in Fifield’s In Search of Genius (New York: Morrow, 1982), pp. 40 and 145.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Computers are useless. They can only give you answers’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/computers-are-useless-they-can-only-give-you-answers/

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