Quote Investigator ↗ states flatly that “the originator of this quip remains anonymous.” The earliest appearance it located is in The Gateway, the University of Alberta student newspaper, on 12 December 1969, where the line runs across the front-page header with no attribution at all. It circulated for decades as graffiti and as a button slogan before anyone attached a famous name to it.
“If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate” Anonymous — first documented in The Gateway (University of Alberta), 12 December 1969. Not Richard Feynman; that credit appears to have been invented for Wes Craven’s 1999 novel Fountain Society. — Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Richard Feynman. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the themes of character, purpose and creativity. Theme: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate". 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 "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate". 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 source
Popularly credited to
Richard Feynman (1918–1988)
Actual status
Anonymous — no originator identified
Earliest documented
The Gateway (University of Alberta), 12 Dec 1969, p. 1
Earliest Feynman attribution
Wes Craven, Fountain Society, a 1999 novel
if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the precipitate
— printed across the header of The Gateway, University of Alberta, 12 December 1969, split between the leftmost and rightmost columns, with no attribution.
The joke is a chemistry pun on the older adage “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”: in chemistry, what does not dissolve into the solution falls out of it as a precipitate.
Quote Investigator’s investigation ↗ concludes that the originator is anonymous, and traces the line from 1969 through student papers, a 1974 newspaper column, 1979 and 1980 sightings, and later literary uses.
In 1974 the columnist Herb Caen ↗ printed it in the San Francisco Chronicle as a graffito someone had spotted on the UC Santa Cruz science library — still anonymous, five years on, and treated as found writing rather than as anyone’s line.
QI also documents the parent adage, “if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem”, in a separate investigation ↗.
This is an anonymous joke with no identified author and no first publication that can be treated as its origin — its earliest known appearance is an unsigned filler line in a 1969 student newspaper. No copyright status can responsibly be asserted, and it should not be treated as public domain simply because nobody has claimed 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
Where the Feynman credit came from
Unusually for a misattribution, this one has a traceable point of origin — and it is a work of fiction.
✕
The exact wordingRichard Feynman No evidence
Quote Investigator ↗ credits no one: “The originator of this quip remains anonymous.” The line was already in print in 1969 and circulating as anonymous graffiti in 1974.
✕
The apparent origin of the Feynman creditWes Craven, Fountain Society (1999) Invented in a novel
In the horror director’s 1999 novel ↗, a scene set in a New Mexico bunker describes graffiti left by “young physicists who were now household names”, and has Feynman writing this line in the 1960s. The same passage also invents an Einstein graffito. QI’s verdict on it is direct: “QI believes this attribution was invented.”
~
Also creditedDavid Foster Wallace User, not author
Wallace put the joke in the mouth of a character in his story “Little Expressionless Animals” (The Paris Review, 1988) — nineteen years after it was already in print. Using a joke is not coining one. Garrison Keillor likewise included it in a 2009 joke book, and it has also been attached to a “Henry J. Tillman”.
✓It is an anonymous chemistry joke, in print since 1969. The Feynman credit appears to have been made up for a novel thirty years later — see Quote Investigator ↗.
Context
Why it mattered
The parent phrase — “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” — was a serious slogan of American activism in the late 1960s. This version is what happens when a science undergraduate hears that slogan and cannot let the double meaning of “solution” go.
That is also why it has no author. It spread the way graffiti and button slogans spread, through campuses and science-fiction conventions, and by the time anyone thought to ask who wrote it the trail was thirty years cold. The famous name arrived last, and arrived from fiction.
It spread like graffiti because it was graffiti.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1918–1988 · theoretical physicist · Nobel Prize 1965
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics and remains the most quotable physicist of his century — a safe-cracking, bongo-playing lecturer with a public reputation for puncturing pomposity. A chemistry pun about not dissolving into the establishment is precisely the kind of thing that reputation attracts. In this case the attraction was literal: a novelist needed a famous physicist to have written on a bunker wall, and picked him.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Quote Investigator
Garson O’Toole, “Quip Origin: If You’re Not Part of the Solution You’re Part of the Precipitate,” Quote Investigator, 14 June 2023. Earliest documented appearance: The Gateway (University of Alberta), 12 December 1969, p. 1, unattributed. Earliest Feynman attribution: Wes Craven, Fountain Society: A Novel (1999), ch. 2.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate’?” Last verified 9 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-youre-not-part-of-the-solution-youre-part-of-the/