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Who really said it

“I simply can't bear fools” / “Apparently, your mother could”

Not Bennett Cerf — a 19th-century joke he retold Anonymous (in print by 1858) First recorded 20 February 1858 · Ballou's Pictorial, Boston · credited to Dorothy Parker from 1941 · retold by Bennett Cerf in 1944
Disputed In copyright

Bennett Cerf printed this exchange in Try and Stop Me (Simon & Schuster, 1944) as a shipboard anecdote about Dorothy Parker — he was the anthologist, not the author, and he never claimed the line. The joke itself was already in print in Boston on 20 February 1858, thirty-five years before Parker was born, as “He can’t bear a natural fool” / “Unfortunately your mother could.” Quote Investigator ↗ concludes the jest was not formulated by Parker either.

Last verified 1 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

““I simply can't bear fools” / “Apparently, your mother could”” "Apparently, your mother could." — not Bennett Cerf's line, and probably not Dorothy Parker's. Cerf printed it in Try and Stop Me (Simon & Schuster, 1944, p. 112) and credited Parker, but the joke ran in Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion on 20 February 1858, thirty-five years before Parker was born. Via Quotle.info

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

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Reader's Digest Association (1941 text); the estate of Bennett Cerf and Simon & Schuster (1944 text)). 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 themes of humility, wisdom and character. Theme: "“I simply can't bear fools” / “Apparently, your mother could”". 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

The 1858 original

Earliest known printing
Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 20 February 1858
Column
“Joker's Budget,” vol. 14, no. 8, p. 127
Earliest Parker credit
The Reader's Digest, “Party Chatter,” June 1941, p. 49
Popularised by
Try and Stop Me by Bennett Cerf (Simon & Schuster, 1944), p. 112

One pedant speaking of another says, “He can’t bear a natural fool;” whereupon the other replies, “Unfortunately your mother could.” 1858 · Boston

The earliest known printing of the joke, in a column of one-line fillers, immediately after a gag about a boy in an oversized hat and a flour-barrel rebus. The cast is two pedants; the famous wit, the drunk and the ocean liner arrive much later.

Scanned periodical
Ballou's Pictorial, 20 February 1858, at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator: “I Simply Can't Bear Fools” / “Apparently, Your Mother Could”

Paper trail

  • 20 February 1858 — Boston. “He can’t bear a natural fool;” / “Unfortunately your mother could.” Printed as an unattributed filler in Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion; the sentence is present in the scanned issue at the Internet Archive ↗.
  • 1867 and 1887 — San Francisco, then the wire. The Golden Era runs the trimmed version (“A pedant said to an old farmer that he could not bear a fool; he replied, ‘Your mother could.’”), and twenty years later the gag is recycled as a newspaper anecdote about young Maine editors — both dated and transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗.
  • June 1941 — the first Parker credit. A reader’s submission to The Reader’s Digest column “Party Chatter” puts the line in Parker’s mouth at a party; this is the earliest attribution to her that QI located ↗.
  • 1944 — the version that stuck. Bennett Cerf moves the scene to a ship and adds the drunk in Try and Stop Me, published by Simon and Schuster ↗; from here the anecdote enters general circulation.
In copyright

The 1858 Ballou’s Pictorial wording quoted above is long out of copyright and freely reproducible. The familiar modern phrasing is a different matter: its earliest documented appearances are The Reader’s Digest of June 1941 and Bennett Cerf’s Try and Stop Me of 1944, both first published well after 1930, so we treat that wording as in-copyright to those publications rather than claiming public domain for it.

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

Three names, none of them the author

This retort is one of the most widely travelled jokes in English, and almost every telling attaches a name to it. The names are all later than the joke.

Bennett Cerf Retold, not coined

Cerf’s Try and Stop Me (Simon & Schuster, 1944) is where most modern retellings ultimately come from, and a line quoted “from Bennett Cerf” is really a line quoted from a book Cerf compiled. He presents it as Dorothy Parker’s remark to a shipboard admirer — page 112, per Quote Investigator ↗, which verified the book in hardcopy. Cerf claimed no authorship of it.

Dorothy Parker Credited from 1941

The earliest cite crediting Parker that Quote Investigator ↗ located is a reader’s submission to the “Party Chatter” column of The Reader’s Digest in June 1941, contributed by one Olga Swanson. The joke had been in print since 1858 and Parker was born in 1893. She may well have used it — QI allows that — but using a joke is not writing one.

“Apparently, your mother could” Not Cerf's wording

Cerf’s 1944 text has the longer “your mother did not have the same difficulty,” and quote sites still circulate that version sourcelessly — see this typical listing ↗, which gives Parker and no citation at all. The three-word core — “Your mother could” — goes back to the anonymous 1867 newspaper filler; the exact four-word form everyone quotes, “Apparently your mother could,” is first documented in The Reader’s Digest of June 1941, the same item that first credits Parker. Both texts per Quote Investigator ↗.

It is an anonymous American jest: printed in Boston in 1858, still working the papers in 1867 and 1887, credited to Parker from 1941 and popularised by Cerf in 1944. Per Quote Investigator ↗, neither of them formulated it.

Context

Why an anecdote book is not a source

Anecdote collections were the viral feeds of their day, and Bennett Cerf ran the biggest one. Try and Stop Me sold enormously in 1944, and the deal it offered readers was that every gag came with a famous face attached — a nameless joke is just a joke, but a joke Dorothy Parker aimed at a drunk on a boat is a story. The attribution was the entertainment, which is exactly why it should not be treated as evidence.

The tell here is the punchline itself. The crisp form was already in print in June 1941 — “Apparently your mother could,” in the same Reader’s Digest squib that first put the line in Parker’s mouth — and it echoes the anonymous 1867 newspaper filler almost exactly. Cerf’s 1944 retelling is the one that padded it, to “your mother did not have the same difficulty,” and the padded version is what survives on sourceless quote sites. The sentence people actually quote is the magazine’s, not the bestseller’s.

The joke did not need Dorothy Parker. Dorothy Parker’s legend needed jokes.

The jest's 19th-century career

1858, Boston. A one-line filler in a “Joker’s Budget” column in Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, printed immediately after a hat gag and a flour-barrel rebus and just before a bookstore gag, with two pedants as the cast.

1867, San Francisco. The same quip resurfaces on the opposite coast in The Golden Era, recast as a pedant and an old farmer, and with the punchline already trimmed to four words: “Your mother could.”

1887, Maine by way of New Jersey. Reworked as a newspaper anecdote titled “Wide-Awake Boy Editors,” in which young editors print an angry correspondent’s “I could never bear a fool” and append a single editorial line beneath it. Dates and texts for all three per Quote Investigator ↗.

Explore

Filed under

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

Humility Wisdom 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 Investigator: “I Simply Can't Bear Fools” / “Apparently, Your Mother Could”quoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: dated citations from 1858, 1867, 1887, the June 1941 Reader's Digest that first credits Parker, and Cerf's 1944 retelling.
Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 20 February 1858archive.org

Scan of the issue whose OCR carries the earliest known printing: “He can't bear a natural fool” / “Unfortunately your mother could.”
Bennett Cerf, Try and Stop Me (1944)archive.org

Catalogue record and scan of the Simon and Schuster first edition — the anecdote collection that carries the Parker version on page 112.
Dorothy Parker — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's Parker page carries no entry for this exchange in any section, sourced, attributed or misattributed.
Bennett Cerf — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography confirming his dates, the Random House co-founding, What's My Line?, and that 1944 brought the first of his joke and anecdote books.

The man who put it in print

About Bennett Cerf

Bennett Cerf

1898–1971 · Random House co-founder, anecdote anthologist & What's My Line? panelist

Bennett Cerf co-founded Random House and spent sixteen years grinning through the panel game show What’s My Line?, but his side career was collecting other people’s wisecracks. In 1944 he published Try and Stop Me, the first of a long run of joke-and-anecdote books, and it is there — page 112 — that the “bear fools” retort reaches a mass audience, told as something Dorothy Parker said to a drunk on a ship. Cerf was a superb curator and a careless custodian of provenance: his books are why dozens of unattached jokes now travel with famous names welded to them, and why his own name sometimes gets welded on in turn.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented printing

“Joker's Budget,” Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion 14, no. 8 (February 20, 1858): 127. Familiar modern wording first documented in “Party Chatter,” The Reader's Digest 38 (June 1941): 49; retold in Bennett Cerf, Try and Stop Me (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944), 112. Chronology per Quote Investigator, “Dialogue Origin: ‘I Simply Can't Bear Fools’ ‘Apparently, Your Mother Could,’” November 29, 2010.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I simply can't bear fools’ / ‘Apparently, your mother could’?” Last verified 1 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-simply-cant-bear-fools-apparently-your-mother-could/

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