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Who really said it

I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it

Not Bill Gates — the wording is Clarence Bleicher’s Clarence E. Bleicher President of Chrysler’s DeSoto division · testified before the U.S. Senate, 31 January 1947
Disputed — the credit to Gates is unsupported, and the popular wording is a later tightening of what was actually said. Rights unconfirmed

No interview, speech, book or memo has ever been produced tying this line to Bill Gates. Quote Investigator ↗ traces the idea to the efficiency engineer Frank B. Gilbreth Sr., described in Popular Science Monthly in December 1920, and the earliest documented wording to Clarence E. Bleicher, president of Chrysler’s DeSoto division, testifying before a U.S. Senate committee on 31 January 1947. The compact sentence people share matches neither man word for word — it is a paraphrase that tightened over decades.

Last verified 13 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it” Unverified. "I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it" has never been traced to Bill Gates. The earliest documented wording is Chrysler executive Clarence E. Bleicher’s testimony to a U.S. Senate committee, January 31, 1947; the underlying idea appears in Popular Science Monthly, December 1920. — Quotle.info · Verbatim: “If you get a tough job, one that is hard, and you haven’t got a way to make it easy, put a lazy man on it, and after 10 days he will have an easy way to do it.”

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

Can you use it?

We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

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In context

Evoking the world of Clarence E. Bleicher — U.S. Senate witness, 1947. Theme: "I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it". 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 "I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it". 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 the line actually comes from

Earliest documented wording
Testimony of Clarence E. Bleicher, Hearings Before the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate
Heard
Friday, 31 January 1947 — 80th Congress, 1st Session, on S. 55 and S. J. Res. 22
Earlier root of the idea
Popular Science Monthly, December 1920, Vol. 97, No. 6, p. 34 — on Frank B. Gilbreth Sr., in an article by Fred C. Kelly
Status
Unverified as a Bill Gates quotation — no source has ever been produced

Mr. BLEICHER. … So if you have got a job that is tough—I have taught my foremen this for some months now—if you get a tough job, one that is hard, and you haven’t got a way to make it easy, put a lazy man on it, and after 10 days he will have an easy way to do it, and you perfect that way and you will have it in pretty good shape. Chrysler, not Microsoft

Bleicher before the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 31 January 1947 — his testimony begins at p. 301 and this passage falls at p. 320, per the citation in Quote Investigator ↗. Note that he says “a lazy man,” not “a lazy person,” and takes three clauses to get there. The compact modern sentence is a later tightening, not his words.

Scanned magazine issue
Popular Science Monthly, December 1920 (Internet Archive)
Quote Investigator: the full citation history

How we verified this

  • December 1920 — Popular Science Monthly profiles the efficiency engineer Frank B. Gilbreth Sr. Studying bricklayers, “he stumbled upon an astonishing fact of great importance and significance. He found that he could learn most from the lazy man!” We read this in the scanned issue itself (Internet Archive ↗).
  • 31 January 1947 — Clarence E. Bleicher tells a U.S. Senate committee to “put a lazy man on” a tough job because he will find an easy way to do it. Quote Investigator ↗ transcribes the exchange and concludes he should be credited with the rough formulation of the quotation.
  • 1948 — Gilbreth’s son and daughter publish Cheaper by the Dozen: “A lazy man, Dad believed, always makes the best use of his Therbligs” — carrying the idea to a mass readership (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • 1980 onward — the tightened sentence circulates unattributed, as “Hlade’s Law” in a 1980 Murphy’s Law collection and, by 2007, credited to Walter Chrysler. The Bill Gates version spreads online with no citation at all (Quote Investigator ↗).

No rights status can honestly be asserted for the sentence as quoted, because it has no identified author. Its two documented ancestors sit in different places: the December 1920 Popular Science Monthly article is in the public domain in the United States, while Bleicher’s words survive in a 1947 U.S. Government Printing Office hearing volume. Neither is a source for the compact wording people actually share.

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

Every efficient boss has been credited with this

The sentence is a management-poster staple, and the name attached to it changes with the decade. None of the popular credits has a source behind it.

Bill Gates No source

The version that circulates today. Quote Investigator ↗ reports no substantive support for it, and Wikiquote ↗ files it under Misattributed, pointing out that Bleicher expressed the thought in 1947 — before Gates was born.

Walter Chrysler No source

A differently worded form — “Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man” — appears credited to Chrysler in a 2007 quotation compilation. QI found no support for that either (Quote Investigator ↗). The irony is that the documented speaker, Bleicher, really did run a Chrysler division.

“Hlade’s Law” Invented attribution

A 1980 Murphy’s Law Book Two collection prints the line as “Hlade’s Law” — the genre’s habit of inventing a surname for an orphaned aphorism (Quote Investigator ↗).

Frank B. Gilbreth Sr. Idea, not wording

Gilbreth genuinely found that lazy workers produced the best labour-saving methods, and Popular Science Monthly reported it in December 1920 — we checked the scan (Internet Archive ↗). But he is described in the third person there; the sentence in circulation is not his.

Best available verdict, and it is Quote Investigator ↗’s: Gilbreth’s research supplied the idea, Bleicher supplied the rough formulation in 1947, and the compact wording evolved afterwards with no single author. Bill Gates is not part of the story.

Context

Why it keeps getting reassigned

The line flatters two audiences at once. It tells the overworked that effort is overrated, and it tells managers that they are shrewd for noticing. A sentence that useful needs a suitably successful mouth to come out of — which is why it has been handed, in turn, to the man who built Chrysler and the man who built Microsoft.

What actually happened is less quotable and more interesting. Frank Gilbreth Sr. spent years timing bricklayers and found that the best labour-saving tricks came from the workers least willing to expend effort. A Chrysler executive repeated the insight to a Senate committee in 1947 as a piece of shop-floor management, and the committee laughed. Nobody in the documented chain said the famous sentence.

He may not do much, but he will find an easy way to do it.

What Bleicher actually told the Senate

The exchange is a genuine transcript, not an anecdote. Senator Allen J. Ellender pressed him on it: “You say you would put a lazy man on a job to find an easy way to do it. Why would you say a lazy man rather than a hard worker?” Bleicher: “Because the lazy man will find an easy way to do it. He may not do much, but he will find an easy way to do it.” The transcript marks laughter twice (Quote Investigator ↗).

Gilbreth’s side of it reached far more people through his children’s 1948 semi-autobiographical book Cheaper by the Dozen, where the same belief appears in family-anecdote form (Wikipedia ↗). Between a Senate hearing nobody reads and a bestseller everybody did, the idea survived and the attribution did not.

Explore

Filed under

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

Work Simplicity Leadership

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: Choose a Lazy Person To Do a Hard Jobquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: the 1920 Gilbreth citation, Bleicher’s 1947 testimony in full, the later drift, and the finding that neither Gates nor Chrysler is supported.
Bill Gates — Misattributeden.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote files this line under Misattributed and notes that Bleicher expressed the thought in 1947, before Gates was born.
Popular Science Monthly, December 1920 (Vol. 97, No. 6)archive.org

The scanned issue carrying Fred C. Kelly’s article on Gilbreth — the earliest documented statement of the idea. The “lazy man” passage is on p. 34.
Frank Bunker Gilbrethen.wikipedia.org

The industrial engineer (1868–1924) whose time-and-motion study of bricklayers produced the observation the quotation grew out of.
Cheaper by the Dozenen.wikipedia.org

The 1948 semi-autobiographical book by Gilbreth’s son and daughter, which carried the “lazy man” idea to a mass audience and helped it travel.
Quote Origin: The Person Who is Clever and Lazy…quoteinvestigator.com

The neighbouring Hammerstein-Equord saying about officers who are clever and lazy. QI treats it as thematically related but separate, because it turns on intelligence as well as laziness — which the line on this page does not mention.

The author

About Clarence E. Bleicher

Clarence E. Bleicher

President, DeSoto division, Chrysler Corporation · U.S. Senate witness, 1947

Clarence E. Bleicher ran the DeSoto division of the Chrysler Corporation, and on 31 January 1947 he appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare during hearings on postwar labour legislation. Asked why he would give a hard job to a lazy man rather than to a hard worker, he answered plainly: “Because the lazy man will find an easy way to do it.” The committee laughed; the transcript kept it. Outside those pages he left little public trace, which is much of why the sentence eventually drifted onto more famous names.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented wording

Clarence E. Bleicher, testimony of 31 January 1947, in Hearings Before the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, Eightieth Congress, First Session, on S. 55 and S. J. Res. 22 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1947), testimony beginning p. 301, quotation p. 320. Earlier root of the idea: Fred C. Kelly, “The Man of the ‘One Best Way’: How Frank Gilbreth Studies Men and Their Ways,” Popular Science Monthly 97, no. 6 (December 1920): 34. Attribution to Bill Gates unverified.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it’?” Last verified 13 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-will-always-choose-a-lazy-person-to-do-a-difficult-job/

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