Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out
Not Carl Sagan — he was quoting someone elseWalter Kotschnig1901–1985 · Austrian-born American diplomat
?Attribution status: Disputed — Sagan printed the line but explicitly disclaimed it, and even the earliest known user holds the credit only tentatively.?Reuse status: Rights unconfirmed
Carl Sagan did print a version of it — “Keeping an open mind is a virtue—but, as the space engineer James Oberg once said, not so open that your brains fall out” (The Demon-Haunted World, 1995, ch. 10, “The Dragon in My Garage”) — and he handed the credit away in the same breath. The polished sentence people share today is not his wording. The earliest published close match Quote Investigator ↗ located is a January 1940 newspaper report of Walter Kotschnig telling Mount Holyoke students to keep their minds open, “but not so open that your brains fall out” — and QI credits even him only tentatively, because a 1937 article in The Yale Law Journal shows the trope was already circulating.
“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out” not Carl Sagan. What Sagan printed in The Demon-Haunted World (Random House, 1995, chapter 10) was "Keeping an open mind is a virtue—but, as the space engineer James Oberg once said, not so open that your brains fall out" — a version of the saying, credited away in the same breath. Quote Investigator tentatively credits Walter Kotschnig (1901–1985), who used a close match at Smith College on 8 November 1939 and at Mount Holyoke College, as reported in the Courier News of Blytheville, Arkansas, on 27 January 1940 — while noting that Max Radin's May 1937 article in The Yale Law Journal shows the phrase was already circulating. Via Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Carl Sagan. Use the credit shown above instead.
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? We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
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In context
Evoking the world of Walter Kotschnig — Austrian-born American diplomat and refugee-relief official. Theme: "Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out". 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
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Provenance
Where the line actually first shows up
Earliest published close match
Courier News, Blytheville, Arkansas, 27 January 1940, p. 2 — reporting a speech by Walter Kotschnig at Mount Holyoke College
Earliest spoken close match
Smith College, 8 November 1939, reported in the Smith Alumnae Quarterly, February 1940 — “But don’t keep your minds so open that your brains fall out!”
Earlier trope
Max Radin, “On Legal Scholarship,” The Yale Law Journal 46, no. 7 (May 1937), p. 1133
Where Sagan used it
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), ch. 10
Prof. Walter Kotschnig told Holyoke College students to keep their minds open—“but not so open that your brains fall out.”
Reported speech, 1940
As transcribed by Quote Investigator from the Courier News of Blytheville, Arkansas, 27 January 1940, page 2. Note the shape of it: a reporter’s summary with only a fragment of Kotschnig’s actual words quoted inside — not a transcript, and not yet the polished modern sentence people share today.
May 1937 — the trope is already in print. Max Radin’s article “On Legal Scholarship” in The Yale Law Journal refers to satirical comments on “persons whose minds are so open that their brains fall out,” as Quote Investigator documents ↗.
1939–40 — Walter Kotschnig uses a close match at Smith College on 8 November 1939, and a report of his Mount Holyoke College talk in the Courier News of 27 January 1940 gives the earliest published close match QI located ↗.
1953–54 — New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger uses the saying, first crediting Smith College president William Allan Neilson and then, a year later, dropping the credit entirely; QI transcribes both appearances ↗.
1995 — Carl Sagan prints a version of it in The Demon-Haunted World — “Keeping an open mind is a virtue—but, as the space engineer James Oberg once said, not so open that your brains fall out” — giving the credit away in the same breath, a disclaimer QI also transcribes ↗. We confirmed the sentence and its attributive clause against the text of the book itself.
There is no single authored work to attach a copyright to: the modern wording is a proverb that drifted through speeches, newspapers and after-dinner talk for decades, and its earliest known user is credited only tentatively. Two things are clear enough — the 1937 and 1940 attestations sit in periodicals published well after 1930, and Carl Sagan’s 1995 phrasing in The Demon-Haunted World is firmly in copyright to his estate and Random House — so nothing on this page should be treated as public domain.
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
Everyone who gets the credit was passing it along
This is an unusual case: most of the famous names attached to the saying were quoting, not coining — and at least two of them said so in print at the time.
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The whole lineCarl Sagan Quoting, not coining
Sagan did put a version of it in The Demon-Haunted World (1995), in the chapter “The Dragon in My Garage” — what he actually wrote was “Keeping an open mind is a virtue—but, as the space engineer James Oberg once said, not so open that your brains fall out,” not the polished sentence people share today — and that attributive clause is the opposite of a claim of authorship. Quote Investigator ↗ lists him among the figures who “used the expression but disclaimed credit.” The credit stuck to him anyway, because his was the most quotable name in the chain.
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The wordingG. K. Chesterton Misremembered
Chesterton wrote about open minds more than once — “An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth” in the Illustrated London News of 10 October 1908, and a related remark in his Autobiography about opening the mind in order to shut it again on something solid, both quoted by the American Chesterton Society ↗. Neither is this sentence, and Quote Investigator ↗ treats the ascription to him as a misremembering of those passages.
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Popularised, not originatedArthur Hays Sulzberger Passed it on
The New York Times publisher used the saying in 1953 and credited Smith College president William Allan Neilson; when he used it again in 1954 he gave no attribution, having taken it to himself so long ago that he no longer credited its originator. Quote Investigator ↗ transcribes both appearances.
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An earlier hand-offWilliam Allan Neilson Credited from 1951
The Smith College president is reported as the source by a teacher writing in the journal Understanding the Child in 1951, and again by Sulzberger in 1953 — but that is eleven years after the saying had already reached print in the January 1940 newspaper report documented by QI ↗.
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Sagan's own creditJames Oberg Named by Sagan
Sagan pointed at the space journalist and NASA veteran James Oberg ↗, who was born in November 1944 — four years after the saying had already appeared in an American newspaper. Oberg may well have used it in Sagan's hearing; he cannot have originated it.
✓Quote Investigator ↗ tentatively credits Walter Kotschnig, whose 1939 and 1940 speeches used a close match, while noting that Max Radin's May 1937 line in The Yale Law Journal shows the trope was already in circulation. On the present evidence, nobody gets a clean claim to it.
Context
Why this one keeps changing hands
Some quotations are stolen. This one was passed around — politely, repeatedly, by people who mostly knew it was not theirs. Arthur Hays Sulzberger used it in the New York Times in 1953 and credited Smith College’s president; a year later he used it again and dropped the credit, having taken it to himself so long ago that he no longer knew whose it was. Four decades later Carl Sagan printed it and pointed at James Oberg. Each honest hand-off moved the saying one step further from whoever first said it.
That is how a proverb forms. It has no author because it has too many — a law professor in 1937, a refugee official addressing undergraduates in 1939, a newspaper publisher, a joke book in 1979 swapping in “broadminded,” and finally the most famous science communicator of the twentieth century, whose name was heavy enough to stop the line moving. The version everyone quotes today is smoother than any of the documented originals, which is the surest sign that it was polished by circulation rather than written by anyone.
A warning against swallowing claims whole — swallowed whole, decade after decade.
Read the full story
The irony is doing a lot of work here. It is a maxim about not accepting a claim just because it sounds good, and it has spent eighty-plus years being accepted just because it sounds good. The quote cards that put it under a photograph of Sagan are performing precisely the failure the sentence warns against.
Kotschnig himself is worth a moment. The man Quote Investigator tentatively credits was not a wit or an aphorist — he was the administrator who spent the mid-1930s finding university posts for scholars the Nazi regime had thrown out of German universities, and who later helped build the United Nations from inside the State Department. He is remembered, when he is remembered at all, for a throwaway line to a student audience. He would probably have preferred the placement lists.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1901–1985 · Austrian-born American diplomat and refugee-relief official
Born in Judenburg, Austria, Kotschnig became general secretary of the International Student Service in Geneva in 1927, and from 1934 served under High Commissioner James G. McDonald as director of the League of Nations’ High Commission for Refugees Coming from Germany — placing displaced scholars as the Nazi purges emptied German universities. He moved to the United States in 1936, took citizenship in 1942, and spent the rest of his career in the State Department, taking part in the Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco conferences that established the United Nations and retiring as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in 1971. The line that outlived all of that was an aside to a room of college students — and even that credit is offered only tentatively.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Chicago
Earliest published close match: Courier News (Blytheville, AR), January 27, 1940, p. 2, reporting a speech by Walter Kotschnig at Mount Holyoke College, as documented in "Quote Origin: Do Not Be So Open-Minded That Your Brains Fall Out," Quote Investigator, April 13, 2014 (updated January 24, 2025). Compare Max Radin, "On Legal Scholarship," Yale Law Journal 46, no. 7 (May 1937): 1124–39, at 1133; and Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Random House, 1995), chap. 10, where the line appears credited to James Oberg.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out’?” Last verified 10 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/do-not-be-so-open-minded-that-your-brains-fall-out/