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Who really said it

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense

Written by Gertrude Stein 1874–1946 · American modernist writer
Verified In copyright

This is a genuine Stein line. It appears verbatim in her essay “Reflection on the Atom Bomb,” written in 1946 and first published in the Yale Poetry Review (December 1947), where it is immediately followed by “They listen so much that they forget to be natural.”

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense” Gertrude Stein, "Reflection on the Atom Bomb" (written 1946; Yale Poetry Review, December 1947)

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Estate of Gertrude Stein). 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

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Provenance

The source

Work
“Reflection on the Atom Bomb” (essay)
Written
1946 — among Stein’s last writings
First published
Yale Poetry Review, December 1947 (posthumous)
Later collected
Reflection on the Atomic Bomb, ed. Robert Bartlett Haas (Black Sparrow Press, 1973)

I am not so scared, there is so much to be scared of so what is the use of bothering to be scared, and if you are not scared the atomic bomb is not interesting. Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural.

The famous line is the second sentence; it is almost always quoted alone, stripped of both the atomic-bomb framing and the sentence that finishes the thought.

Full text of “Reflection on the Atom Bomb” (UPenn)

How we know

In copyright

Stein wrote the essay in 1946 and it was first published posthumously in the Yale Poetry Review in December 1947. Under U.S. law a work first published in 1947 remains in copyright, so the wording is controlled by Stein’s estate and its publishers, not public domain.

Fact-check

A genuine quote, often mangled

The attribution is right — this really is Stein. What goes wrong is the wording and the context.

“Everyone gets so much information…” mis-wording

Stein wrote “Everybody,” not “Everyone.” The primary text reads “Everybody gets so much information all day long…”; the “Everyone” version circulates widely on quote sites but is not what she wrote.

An aphorism about “the internet age” context stripped

The line is almost always presented as a timeless remark about digital information overload. In fact it comes from a 1946 reflection on the atomic bomb, and its next sentence — “They listen so much that they forget to be natural” — is usually dropped.

Verdict: authentically Gertrude Stein, from “Reflection on the Atom Bomb” (1946) — just spell it “Everybody” and remember it was written under the shadow of the bomb, per the sourced record.

Context

Why it mattered

Asked in 1946 what she thought of the atomic bomb, Stein answered that she could not take any interest in it — the essay is a study in deliberate un-alarm. The common-sense line is her diagnosis of the surrounding noise: not the bomb, but the flood of talk and information around it, is what leaves people unable to think plainly.

Written months before her death, the piece reads as one of her last aphoristic verdicts on modern life, which is partly why the sentence has outlived its atomic-age occasion and been adopted, almost verbatim, as a motto for the information age.

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.”

Explore

Filed under

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

Wisdom Simplicity

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.

“Reflection on the Atom Bomb” — full textwriting.upenn.edu

The complete essay, hosted by Al Filreis at the University of Pennsylvania, containing the line in context.
Gertrude Steinen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s sourced entry, which lists the quote under “Reflections on the Atom Bomb” (1946).
Stein quote citationwist.info

WIST’s catalog record giving the essay, publication and 1947 date.
Gertrude Stein’s Atomic Bombsmuse.jhu.edu

Scholarship on Stein’s wartime and atomic-bomb writings, providing background to the essay.
Gertrude Steinpoetryfoundation.org

Biographical overview of Stein’s life and modernist work.

The author

About Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

1874–1946 · American modernist writer & art collector

Gertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in Paris, where her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus was a hub of modernist art and letters. Known for radically experimental prose and repetitions — “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” — she wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and mentored a generation of writers. “Reflection on the Atom Bomb” was one of her final pieces, written the year she died.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Gertrude Stein, “Reflection on the Atom Bomb,” Yale Poetry Review (December 1947); written 1946. Reprinted in Reflection on the Atomic Bomb, ed. Robert Bartlett Haas (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1973).

MLA (9th ed.)

Stein, Gertrude. “Reflection on the Atom Bomb.” Yale Poetry Review, Dec. 1947.

APA (7th ed.)

Stein, G. (1947). Reflection on the atom bomb. Yale Poetry Review.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/everybody-gets-so-much-information-all-day-long-that-they

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