Quote Investigator ↗ credits the quip to Groucho and finds this wording in print by August 1950 — bar the comma after “set,” which later printings add — as a freestanding item in Reader’s Digest signed with his name. But the version Groucho demonstrably wrote himself — in his essay “King Leer” for the TV-listings magazine Tele-Views, which ran shortly before his October 1950 television debut and is reported as September 1950 — is worded differently, so the familiar sentence cannot be pinned to anything he is documented to have written.
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book” Groucho Marx (attributed). "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." Earliest documented printing: Reader's Digest, August 1950. Groucho's own, differently worded version appeared in his essay 'King Leer,' Tele-Views, 1950 (issue unidentified; reported as September, shortly before his October television debut). Attribution traced by Quote Investigator. Via Quotle.info.
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Evoking the world of Groucho Marx — American comedian, Marx Brothers star, host of You Bet Your Life. Theme: "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book". 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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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book". 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
The 1950 paper trail
Earliest documented printing
Reader’s Digest, August 1950
Groucho’s own version
“King Leer,” Tele-Views, shortly before October 1950 (reported as September; issue unidentified)
Reprinted in
The Essential Groucho, ed. Stefan Kanfer (Vintage, 2000)
Investigated by
Quote Investigator, 18 January 2014
I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go into the library and read a good book.
“King Leer,” Tele-Views, shortly before October 1950
This is the wording Groucho wrote, as transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗ — not the sentence that became famous. In the essay he immediately calls the attitude “cynical” and adds that now that he is part of television he doesn’t mean a word of it, before urging readers to watch his new show.
August 1950 — The earliest printing found by Quote Investigator ↗ is a freestanding filler item in Reader’s Digest carrying the familiar wording and signed simply “Groucho Marx” — no interview, no source note.
3 August 1950 — The Christian Science Monitor reprints it under the heading “Marx on TV,” crediting Reader’s Digest, as transcribed by QI ↗. Newspaper reprints continue through 1951.
Before October 1950 — Groucho’s own essay “King Leer” appears in the TV-listings magazine Tele-Views, closing by asking readers to watch the television debut of You Bet Your Life that October, with a different wording. The September 1950 month is an assertion by Robert S. Bader’s 1993 collection Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories and Tall Tales, relayed by Quote Investigator ↗, which says it has not identified the precise issue of Tele-Views. The essay is reprinted, undated, in The Essential Groucho (2000) ↗.
25 November 1950 — Bennett Cerf’s Saturday Review column reports that Groucho said the Reader’s Digest wording to Doubleday editor Ken McCormick — the only named route by which that version may have reached print, per QI ↗.
Both documented forms of this line were first published in 1950 — the familiar wording in Reader’s Digest in August, Groucho’s own version in Tele-Views shortly before his October debut — well after the pre-1931 cutoff for US public domain by age, so neither can be treated as public domain here. Rights would rest with Groucho Marx’s estate and the original publishers, with the 2000 Essential Groucho reprint separately in copyright to Vintage Books.
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 problem isn’t who — it’s which words
Groucho Marx is one of the internet’s great fake-quote magnets, so the usual suspicion applies. Here it lands somewhere unusual: the attribution holds up, and it is the wording that has come loose. At least three sentences circulate as “the” Groucho television quote, and the most famous of them is not the one he is documented to have written.
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Wording“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” Not his written version
This is the wording that spread — it is essentially what Reader’s Digest printed in August 1950 (that item, as transcribed by QI from the page, carries no comma after “set”) and what Bennett Cerf repeated in Saturday Review that November, reporting that Groucho had said it to Doubleday editor Ken McCormick. But Quote Investigator ↗ notes that the version Groucho wrote himself reads: “I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go into the library and read a good book.”
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Wording“…Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.” Third variant
A blend of the other two, listed on Wikiquote ↗ among its sourced quotes with a citation to Leslie Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1984). Quote Investigator’s reading is that several later renderings like this one are composites of the 1950 wordings.
✕
Date“King Leer” dated to 1947 Bad date
The Yale Book of Quotations gives 1947 for the essay, a date Garson O’Toole flags as unexplained ↗: the piece closes by asking readers to watch You Bet Your Life, which reached television in October 1950, so it can only have run shortly before that. Nobody has produced the issue — The Essential Groucho (2000) reprints the essay with no date at all, crediting only Tele-Views, and O’Toole was still asking fellow researchers for access to 1950 runs of the magazine.
✓Credit the joke to Groucho Marx — Quote Investigator ↗ says so plainly — but know that you are quoting the 1950 magazine wording, not the sentence he set down under his own byline.
Context
The joke was an advertisement
The line reads like a swipe at television, and for decades it has been quoted that way — the highbrow comedian refusing the idiot box. The timing says something stranger. In 1950 Groucho was about to become a television star: You Bet Your Life moved onto NBC television that October, and the essay in which he set the gag down in his own words, “King Leer,” was written for a TV-listings magazine to trail that debut.
So the most anti-TV quip in circulation was, in its documented form, promotional copy for a TV show. Groucho knew it, and said so on the spot: having delivered the line, he called the attitude cynical and noted that now he was part of television he didn’t mean a word of it, per Quote Investigator’s transcription of the essay ↗.
The most anti-television joke in circulation was, in its documented form, an ad for a television show.
Why the wording keeps shifting
A gag delivered in conversation, printed as a magazine filler, rewritten by its author for a listings magazine and then re-quoted by columnists is exactly the kind of text that drifts. “Educating” and “educational” swap places; “the other room” becomes “the library”; “a book” becomes “a good book.”
Quote Investigator allows that Groucho may have used more than one formulation, and finds several later renderings to be composites of the earlier ones — which is why no single sentence can be called the definitive original.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1890–1977 · American comedian, Marx Brothers star, host of You Bet Your Life
Born Julius Henry Marx in New York City in 1890, Groucho went from vaudeville with his brothers to thirteen Marx Brothers features, among them Animal Crackers, Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera. He was also a working writer — essays for magazines and books including Groucho and Me (1959) and The Groucho Letters (1967) — which matters here, because the television gag survives in a piece he wrote rather than merely a line someone remembered. In October 1950 he took the quiz show You Bet Your Life onto NBC television, where it ran until 1961.
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How to cite this page
Earliest documented printing: “I find television very educating…,” Reader’s Digest, August 1950. Groucho Marx’s own, differently worded version: “King Leer,” Tele-Views, 1950 (issue unidentified; reported as September, shortly before his October television debut); reprinted in Stefan Kanfer, ed., The Essential Groucho: Writings by, for, and about Groucho Marx (New York: Vintage Books, 2000). Attribution traced by Quote Investigator, 18 January 2014.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-find-television-very-educating-every-time-somebody-turns/