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Who really said it

He is suffering from delusions of adequacy

Not Dwight D. Eisenhower — actually Walter Kerr Walter Kerr 1913–1996 · drama critic, New York Herald Tribune
Disputed In copyright

Kerr wrote the earliest known instance on 18 October 1951, reviewing the Broadway show “Buy Me Blue Ribbons” for the New York Herald Tribune — Quote Investigator traces the coinage to him, calling this the earliest instance it located; the target was the play’s actor-producer, Jay Robinson. Eisenhower is attached to it only because in August 1954 the British Labour MP Michael Foot turned the phrase on the president — and said in the same breath that someone else had coined it.

Last verified 30 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“He is suffering from delusions of adequacy” Walter Kerr, review of "Buy Me Blue Ribbons," New York Herald Tribune, 18 October 1951. Not Dwight D. Eisenhower: in 1954 the British MP Michael Foot aimed the phrase at Eisenhower, and credited it to someone else. Via quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright. 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 Walter Kerr — American drama critic · 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Theme: "He is suffering from delusions of adequacy". 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 review that first printed it

Work
New York Herald Tribune, review of “Buy Me Blue Ribbons”
First printed
18 October 1951, page 20
Reprinted
Walter Kerr, Pieces at Eight (Simon and Schuster, 1957), pp. 101–102
Aimed at
Jay Robinson (1930–2013), the play’s actor-producer

All Mr. Robinson can honestly do now is to take his own advice. At the moment, he is suffering from delusions of adequacy. Kerr on Jay Robinson, 18 Oct 1951

Quote Investigator transcribes the fuller passage from page 20, together with every documented reuse of the phrase — see the investigation ↗.

Scanned trade paper
Variety, 24 October 1951 (full issue scan)
Quote Investigator: Suffering from Delusions of Adequacy

Paper trail

In copyright

The wording was first published on 18 October 1951 in the New York Herald Tribune, and reprinted by Kerr in Pieces at Eight (Simon and Schuster, 1957) — both well after the 1931 US public-domain cutoff, so the text should be treated as in copyright rather than free to reuse at length. We have not traced who holds the rights today: the review’s first-publication proprietor was the Herald Tribune, the 1957 book was published by Simon and Schuster, and for a 1951 US work the renewal record would need checking too. Quoting the sentence with attribution is ordinary critical citation; reproducing the surrounding review 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.

Fact-check

The Eisenhower problem

The Eisenhower credit is an inversion. He really is in this story — on the receiving end of it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Target, not author

On 15 August 1954 the Labour MP Michael Foot used the phrase about Eisenhower — “He suffers, as someone has said, from delusions, of adequacy” — and that “as someone has said” is Foot disclaiming authorship outright. Quote Investigator transcribes the remark from the Daily Boston Globe ↗. The line also appears nowhere on Eisenhower’s own Wikiquote page ↗, in any section.

Walter Kerr Mis-worded

Aggregators circulate a flattened “He had delusions of adequacy” alongside the real thing. The 1951 review reads “he is suffering from delusions of adequacy,” and Kerr kept “suffering” when he rewrote it for his 1957 book. Sites that do carry the full wording credit Kerr correctly but name no source ↗.

Charlton Heston Borrowed

In 1967 Heston applied the phrase to himself, saying he had delusions of adequacy as a conductor. It is one of a run of reuses catalogued by Quote Investigator ↗: Heston’s aside and a 1987 David Brin novel both drop the credit, loosening the line from the man who wrote it. Diana Rigg’s 1983 anthology No Turn Unstoned is the opposite case — a compilation of theatre reviews that reprints Kerr’s own 1957 sentence verbatim.

It is Walter Kerr’s, written on deadline in October 1951 about a Broadway show that lasted 13 performances — and in 1954 a British MP aimed it at a sitting US president. Quote Investigator ↗

Context

Why it mattered

Kerr was in his first year as the Herald Tribune’s theater critic when “Buy Me Blue Ribbons” opened at the Empire Theatre on 17 October 1951. Sumner Locke Elliott had written it, Cyril Ritchard directed, and its young star Jay Robinson had also produced it. The show closed after 13 performances, and Kerr’s notice supplied the epitaph.

What made the phrase travel is its economy: it borrows the shape of a clinical diagnosis — delusions of grandeur — and lets the air out. Wiktionary logs it as exactly that, an ironic variation on the older term. It did not stay on the theater pages either: by August 1954 a British MP was deploying it in remarks about the leadership of an American president.

Robinson survived it. The actor Kerr diagnosed went on to play Caligula in Hollywood — twice.

What happened to the actor, and where the line went next

The notice did not end Jay Robinson’s career. Robinson (1930–2013) was cast as Caligula in The Robe (1953) and again in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), then took roles in The Virgin Queen (1955), The Wild Party (1956) and My Man Godfrey (1957).

Kerr liked the line enough to keep it. He reworked it for Pieces at Eight, his 1957 Simon and Schuster collection, where it becomes a rhetorical question about what gameness is worth in a man suffering from delusions of adequacy. Quote Investigator follows the phrase onward through a 1967 Charlton Heston aside about his own conducting, Diana Rigg’s 1983 compilation No Turn Unstoned, and David Brin’s 1987 novel The Uplift War.

Explore

Filed under

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

Humility Character

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 Origin: Suffering from Delusions of Adequacyquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: transcribes Kerr's 18 October 1951 review from page 20, the Variety follow-up, Michael Foot's 1954 use against Eisenhower, and every later borrowing.
Variety, 24 October 1951 (full issue scan)archive.org

Scanned trade paper from the Media History Digital Library; its searchable text names Walter F. Kerr of the Herald Tribune as the author of the observation about Jay Robinson.
delusion of adequacyen.wiktionary.org

Dictionary entry crediting Kerr's 1951 Herald Tribune review of Buy Me Blue Ribbons and calling the phrase an ironic variation of 'delusion of grandeur.'
Buy Me Blue Ribbonsen.wikipedia.org

The play itself: Sumner Locke Elliott, Empire Theatre, opened 17 October 1951, 13 performances, and quotes Kerr's verdict on the production as he rewrote it for Pieces at Eight (1957) — not the Herald Tribune review, and the phrase 'delusions of adequacy' does not appear there.
Walter Kerren.wikipedia.org

Biography of the real author: Herald Tribune theater critic from 1951, winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (Wikiquote)en.wikiquote.org

The negative check: neither 'adequacy' nor 'delusions' appears anywhere on Eisenhower's Wikiquote page, in the sourced, disputed or misattributed sections.

The real author

Who Walter Kerr was

Walter Kerr

1913–1996 · American drama critic · 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism

Walter Francis Kerr (1913–1996) became theater critic of the New York Herald Tribune in 1951 and held the job until the paper folded, writing notices sharp enough that rival papers quoted them back. He won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism “for articles on the theater.” He was a playwright and director as well as a reviewer, which gave his verdicts on acting an insider’s precision — and is a large part of why a line like this one landed.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Kerr, Walter F. Review of "Buy Me Blue Ribbons." New York Herald Tribune, October 18, 1951, 20. Reprinted in Walter Kerr, Pieces at Eight (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 101–2. Earliest instance located by Quote Investigator, "Quote Origin: Suffering from Delusions of Adequacy," November 7, 2015.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘He is suffering from delusions of adequacy’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/he-is-suffering-from-delusions-of-adequacy/

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