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Who really said it

How many people here tonight are telekinetic? Raise my hand

Not Kurt Vonnegut — actually comedian Emo Philips Emo Philips b. 1956 · American stand-up comedian
Disputed In copyright

This is a stand-up one-liner, not a line from any Vonnegut book. Quote Investigator traces it to surreal comedian Emo Philips, whose act contained the joke by November 1985 ↗. The Vonnegut credit only surfaced in a 2007 newspaper obituary sidebar and “has no substantive support.”

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“How many people here tonight are telekinetic? Raise my hand” Not Kurt Vonnegut. The joke "How many people here tonight are telekinetic? Raise my hand" is traced by Quote Investigator to comedian Emo Philips, whose act contained it by November 1985. The Vonnegut credit first appeared only in a 2007 obituary sidebar and has no substantive support.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Kurt Vonnegut. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Emo Philips). 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 Emo Philips — American stand-up comedian & actor. Theme: "How many people here tonight are telekinetic? Raise my hand". 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 "How many people here tonight are telekinetic? Raise my hand". 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 it really comes from

Originator
Emo Philips (stand-up act)
Earliest record
Nov 1985, Birmingham Post-Herald profile
Form
Spoken comedy one-liner (not a book)
Vonnegut link
2007 obituary sidebar — no support

How many people here tonight are telekinetic? Raise my hand.

The earliest documented wording, from Emo Philips’ act in 1985, ran “How many people here have telekinetic powers? … Raise my hand!” The joke circulates in many near-identical variants.

Quote Investigator: full chronology of the telekinetic joke

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ dates the joke to a November 1985 profile of Emo Philips and calls him the leading candidate to have created it.
  • The same investigation records the drift of credit over time: to Steven Wright by 1998, then to Kurt Vonnegut only in a May 2007 newspaper sidebar published after Vonnegut’s death.
  • Sites such as Goodreads ↗ still file the paraphrase “Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand” under Vonnegut with no source.
In copyright

The line is a modern stand-up joke documented from November 1985, well after 1931, so it is treated as in-copyright to its author, Emo Philips. (The copyright status of spoken stand-up material is itself unsettled, but nothing here is public domain and it is certainly not Vonnegut’s.)

Fact-check

How Vonnegut got the credit

This is a comedian’s one-liner that migrated onto a beloved author. Quote Investigator followed the paper trail and found the credit drifting across three famous names.

Kurt Vonnegut no support

The Vonnegut credit surfaces only in a May 2007 sidebar in The Courier (Iowa) reviewing his life just after his death; per Quote Investigator ↗ it “has no substantive support” and appears in none of his books. The paraphrase “Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand” is now pinned to him on Goodreads ↗.

Steven Wright unlikely

The joke was ascribed to deadpan comedian Steven Wright by 1998; it fits his style, but the 13-year gap after the 1985 Emo Philips citation makes it unlikely, and Wright is himself a known quotation magnet, per Quote Investigator ↗.

The leading candidate to have created the joke is comedian Emo Philips, whose act contained it by November 1985 ↗ — years before either famous author was ever credited.

Context

Why the joke sticks

The gag is a paraprosdokian: “How many people here tonight are telekinetic?” sets up a show-of-hands, then “Raise my hand” yanks the logic sideways — if telekinesis were real, the audience could move the speaker’s hand. That compressed self-referential twist is the signature of Emo Philips’ writing.

It reads as “Vonnegut-ish” because Vonnegut prized dry, deflating one-liners — which is exactly why a stray obituary sidebar could glue a comedian’s bit to him and have it stick.

If telekinesis were real, you’d raise his hand.

Explore

Filed under

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

Creativity

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 Investigator: telekinetic, raise my handquoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative chronology tracing the joke to Emo Philips (1985) and debunking the Vonnegut and Steven Wright credits.
Emo Philips — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced collection of Emo Philips’ stand-up material and one-liners.
Goodreads — the Vonnegut misattributiongoodreads.com

An example of the unsourced paraphrase filed under Kurt Vonnegut.
Kurt Vonnegut — Quote Investigator archivequoteinvestigator.com

Collected QI investigations into quotes misattributed to Vonnegut, a major quotation magnet.

The author

About Emo Philips

Emo Philips

b. 1956 · American stand-up comedian & actor

Emo Philips (born Phil Soltanec, February 7, 1956) is an American comedian known for a surreal, childlike stage persona and paraprosdokian one-liners delivered in a wandering falsetto. A cult figure of the 1980s comedy scene, he is celebrated for jokes that swap a predictable punchline for a grim or absurd twist — exactly the shape of the telekinesis gag. His act was widely covered in the mid-1980s, including a 1985 profile that captured this very line.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Quote Investigator

Garson O’Toole (Gregory F. Sullivan), “Quote Origin: How Many People Here Tonight Are Telekinetic? Raise My Hand,” Quote Investigator, November 16, 2018, citing the earliest match in the Birmingham Post-Herald, November 1985.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘How many people here tonight are telekinetic? Raise my hand’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/how-many-people-here-tonight-are-telekinetic-raise-my-hand

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