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Who really said it

Culture does not consist in acquiring opinions, but in getting rid of them

Attributed to W. B. Yeats 1865–1939 · Irish poet, dramatist and mystic; Nobel Prize for Literature, 1923
Attributed — spoken, not written, and recorded once, from memory, long afterwards. In copyright

Yeats said it aloud, not in print. The novelist and critic L. A. G. Strong — a long-time friend of the poet — overheard him say it to two English dons and reported it in “Yeats at His Ease” in The London Magazine for March 1955, on page 57. That single article is the whole documented basis for the line: no manuscript, no letter, no essay of Yeats’s own contains it, and Strong published his recollection sixteen years after Yeats’s death. Quote Investigator ↗ accepts it and says so plainly — while noting that “the long delay detracts from the solidity of the testimony.”

Last verified 9 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Culture does not consist in acquiring opinions, but in getting rid of them” W. B. Yeats, overheard at Oxford and recorded by L. A. G. Strong in "Yeats at His Ease," The London Magazine, March 1955, page 57. Yeats never wrote it down; the line survives only in Strong's recollection, published sixteen years after Yeats's death.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of L. A. G. Strong and the publishers of The London Magazine). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of W. B. Yeats — Irish poet, dramatist and mystic · Nobel Prize for Literature, 1923. Theme: "Culture does not consist in acquiring opinions, but in getting rid of them". 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.

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Provenance

The source

Earliest documented source
Yeats at His Ease
Recorded by
L. A. G. Strong · The London Magazine, volume 2, number 3, March 1955
Located at
Article begins page 56; the quotation is on page 57
Form of evidence
A friend’s recollection of speech, published sixteen years after Yeats died

Yeats in my hearing remarked to two English dons, ‘I can’t see what you think you are achieving. You seem to be busy with the propagation of second and third and fourth hand opinions upon literature. Culture does not consist in acquiring opinions, but in getting rid of them.’ L. A. G. Strong, “Yeats at His Ease”, 1955

That is the passage as Quote Investigator reproduces it ↗ from page 57. The famous sentence is the last of three, and the two before it are what give it its edge: Yeats is not talking about culture in the abstract, he is telling two academics to their faces what he thinks of their trade. We could not consult the 1955 issue of The London Magazine ourselves; the wording and the page locator are QI’s.

Quote Investigator: the 1955 London Magazine recollection

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator’s investigation ↗ traces the sentence to one source: L. A. G. Strong’s article “Yeats at His Ease” in The London Magazine: A Monthly Review of Literature, volume 2, number 3, March 1955 — article start page 56, quotation on page 57.
  • Its conclusion is an acceptance with a caveat attached, and we have kept the caveat: “the words of W. B. Yeats were overheard by Leonard Strong when Yeats was at Oxford, and Strong shared the quotation in an article published many years later in 1955. The long delay detracts from the solidity of the testimony, but the vividness of the opinion may have produced a durable memory in Strong’s mind.”
  • Every later appearance QI documents traces back through Strong rather than around him — James Johnson Sweeney’s Vision and Image: A Way of Seeing (1968), quotation page 119, and Monk Gibbon’s “The Yeats I Knew” in E. H. Mikhail’s W. B. Yeats: Interviews and Recollections (1977), article start page 372, quotation page 378. There is no independent contemporary witness.
  • We read Wikiquote’s William Butler Yeats page ↗ in full — a long, heavily sourced page organised work by work. The sentence does not appear anywhere on it, in any section. That absence is the point: this is a remark, not a text.
  • Dates checked independently: Yeats, 13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939 ↗, and Leonard Alfred George Strong, 8 March 1896 – 17 August 1958 ↗, who published as L. A. G. Strong. Strong was writing three years before his own death, about a friend who had been dead for sixteen.
In copyright

Most of Yeats’s own work published before 1931 is in the public domain in the United States — but this sentence is not from it. The only text that carries the wording is Strong’s article of March 1955, which is well inside copyright. Quoting the sentence itself is ordinary attributed quotation; reproducing Strong’s passage at length is not.

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.

Context

Why it mattered

Yeats came to live at Oxford in 1919, and Strong records him there as productive and happy — and, on this occasion, sharp. The remark lands on two dons in the business of literary opinion, and its claim is deliberately backwards: that being cultured means holding fewer views, not more.

It has since become a favourite of people arguing against received opinion, usually stripped of the scene that produced it. Restored to that scene it is less a maxim than a put-down, delivered to the faces of the men it was about.

Not a maxim about culture. A put-down, delivered to two dons who were listening.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Knowledge Doubt

Go further

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 Investigatorquoteinvestigator.com

The 1955 Strong article, the full anecdote, page locators and the caveat about the delay
Wikiquote: William Butler Yeatsen.wikiquote.org

A long, work-by-work sourced page — which does not carry this sentence at all
Wikipedia: W. B. Yeatsen.wikipedia.org

The poet’s life, 1865–1939, and the Oxford years from 1919
Wikipedia: Leonard Strongen.wikipedia.org

The witness: English novelist and critic (1896–1958) who published as L. A. G. Strong
Yeats at Project Gutenbergwww.gutenberg.org

Free full texts of Yeats’s out-of-copyright books — among them The Countess Cathleen and Per Amica Silentia Lunae

The author

About W. B. Yeats

W. B. Yeats

1865–1939 · Irish poet, dramatist and mystic · Nobel Prize for Literature, 1923

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish symbolist poet, dramatist and mystic, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 and later the compiler of the Oxford Book of Modern Verse. He came to live at Oxford in 1919, in what his friend L. A. G. Strong remembered as a productive and happy period. He was a formidable talker as well as a writer, which is why a number of the lines people quote from him — this one included — were spoken rather than published.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Strong, L. A. G. “Yeats at His Ease.” The London Magazine: A Monthly Review of Literature 2, no. 3 (March 1955): 56–, quotation on page 57. The earliest documented record of the remark, per Quote Investigator ↗

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Culture does not consist in acquiring opinions, but in getting rid of them’?” Last verified 9 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/culture-does-not-consist-in-acquiring-opinions-but-in/

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