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Who really said it

Insanity Is Hereditary. You Can Get It from Your Children

Not Ann Landers — actually Sam Levenson Sam Levenson 1911–1980 · American humorist, teacher and television host
Disputed In copyright

The earliest printing Quote Investigator has found is 6 April 1961, in an Oklahoma newspaper column, and it already carries the credit: “Insanity is hereditary. You can get it from your children. —Sam Levenson.” Walter Winchell ran it the next day as “Sam Levenson’s merciless truth”, and Levenson put it in his own 1973 memoir. It reached Ann Landers’s column in 1978, in a reader’s list of comic “Laws”, where it was labelled “Landers’ Law” and signed with her name — which is where the modern credit comes from.

Last verified 30 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Insanity Is Hereditary. You Can Get It from Your Children” Sam Levenson, credited by name in The Ada Weekly News (Ada, Oklahoma) on 6 April 1961 and by Walter Winchell the next day; Levenson used it again in his memoir In One Era and Out the Other (1973), p. 21. Not Ann Landers, whose column printed it in 1978 as "Landers’ Law" inside a reader-submitted list of comic maxims. In copyright.

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

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Sam Levenson). 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 Sam Levenson — American humorist, teacher and television host. Theme: "Insanity Is Hereditary. You Can Get It from Your Children". 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 "Insanity Is Hereditary. You Can Get It from Your Children". 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

Earliest located printing
The Ada Weekly News, Ada, Oklahoma, 6 April 1961, p. 4, col. 1
The column
“Strayed From the Heard” by Connie Nelson — credit given to Sam Levenson on the spot
Next day, syndicated
Walter Winchell, San Diego Union, 7 April 1961, p. A16, col. 5
Levenson’s own use
In One Era and Out the Other
That book
Sam Levenson, 1973, p. 21 — the line used as the title of one of his luncheon talks

“Insanity is hereditary. You can get it from your children. —Sam Levenson”

As printed in the Ada, Oklahoma column of 6 April 1961, quoted by Quote Investigator. We have not read the newspaper page ourselves; it sits behind a subscription archive we cannot reach.

Quote Investigator’s full chronology, 1961 to 1981

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ concludes: “the quip was ascribed to Sam Levenson by April 1961. He also included it in his 1973 memoir, and QI believes he probably crafted it.”
  • The earliest evidence QI located is 6 April 1961, in “Strayed From the Heard” by Connie Nelson in The Ada Weekly News of Ada, Oklahoma, page 4 — and Levenson is named right there in the item. One day later Walter Winchell’s syndicated column carried it as “Sam Levenson’s merciless truth”. Both citations are to subscription newspaper archives we could not open, so we are reporting them as QI’s findings.
  • Levenson used the line himself in In One Era and Out the Other (1973), page 21, where it is the announced subject of one of his talks. QI records verifying that page against scans of the Pocket Books edition. The book on the Internet Archive ↗ is lending-restricted, so we could not read the page either.
  • The Ann Landers link is documented rather than mysterious. On 26 March 1978 her column printed a batch of comic “Laws” a reader had sent in; alongside “Lippmann’s Law” sat “Landers’ Law: Insanity is hereditary — you can get it from your children. — Ann Landers.” QI reproduces the item ↗ and calls the self-ascription implausible.
  • The joke’s grey-hair twin ran the same course. The Rotarian of September 1967 ↗ carries it, per Quote Investigator, as a short poem on page 51 credited to Helen Gorn Sutin — “Our gray hair is hereditary: We get it from our kids!” — and a Dave Berg cartoon in Mad used it the following year.
In copyright

First printed in a newspaper in 1961 and reused by Levenson in a 1973 book, so this is comfortably inside copyright: everything published in the United States from 1931 onward remains protected. Treat it as in copyright — quote it with attribution rather than reusing it as free text. The attribution being wrong for decades does not put it in the public domain.

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

Often misattributed

This joke has been pinned on at least five well-known names. Quote Investigator’s article lists eight candidates in its opening line, which is usually a sign that a line escaped its author early.

Ann Landers Refuted

Her column of 26 March 1978 printed it as “Landers’ Law” signed “Ann Landers” — but inside a list of mock adages a reader had mailed in, not as her own writing, and seventeen years after Levenson was being credited by name. QI ↗ calls the ascription implausible. Worth noting that “Ann Landers” was a pen name ↗: the column in 1978 was written by Esther “Eppie” Lederer.

Sam Levenson

Credited in print by 6 April 1961, endorsed by Walter Winchell the next day, and used by Levenson himself in his 1973 memoir. QI believes he probably crafted it ↗.

W. C. Fields No substantive support

A Tucson newspaper column of 18 October 1968 offered it as “an old W. C. Fields goodie”. QI ↗ states plainly that it “has found no substantive support for this linkage” — and Fields had died in 1946 ↗, twenty-two years before that column ran.

Erma Bombeck quoted, not authored

Bombeck printed the line in January 1980 but explicitly did not claim it — she said she had seen it on a bumper sticker. Bombeck (1927–1996) ↗ is nevertheless one of the names it is most often given to. QI ↗

Oscar Levant later variant

By March 1963 the pianist was using his own version — “Insanity is hereditary — we catch it from our children” — as reported by the columnist Herb Caen. QI ↗ notes it was already circulating by then. Levant (1906–1972) ↗

Sam Levenson made the joke; Ann Landers published somebody else’s list. Quote Investigator’s full account ↗

Context

Why it mattered

Sam Levenson was a Brooklyn schoolteacher who became one of American television’s most-watched humorists, and this is his register exactly: a one-line inversion of received wisdom, aimed squarely at parents. Heredity flows the wrong way, and the children are the affliction.

The line has had an unusually busy career. Between 1961 and 1981 it was credited to Levenson, borrowed by Oscar Levant, pinned on W. C. Fields, printed by Ann Landers under her own name, disclaimed by Erma Bombeck as bumper-sticker wisdom, and mutated into a joke about grey hair that Princess Grace of Monaco was using by 1981.

Insanity is hereditary. You can get it from your children.

Read the full story

The 1978 Ann Landers item is the most instructive step in the chain, because it shows a misattribution being manufactured in public. The list of “Laws” was a reader’s joke format: attach a plausible name to each maxim. “Lippmann’s Law” went to Walter Lippmann, and “Landers’ Law” went to the columnist the reader was writing to. Printed in a syndicated column read by millions, a gag ascription became a citation.

The grey-hair variant is worth following for the same reason. It appeared as a credited poem in The Rotarian in September 1967, as a Dave Berg cartoon in Mad in October 1968, and as a remark by Princess Grace in People in November 1981 — three different media, three different names, one joke. Quote Investigator’s article tracks all of them.

Explore

Filed under

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

Love Happiness

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: “Insanity Is Hereditary”quoteinvestigator.com

The full 1961–1981 chronology, all eight candidate names, and the conclusion that Sam Levenson probably crafted the line.
Sam Levensonen.wikipedia.org

The author (1911–1980) — American humorist, writer, teacher, television host and journalist.
Ask Ann Landersen.wikipedia.org

On the column and the pen name: created by Ruth Crowley in 1943 and taken over by Esther "Eppie" Lederer in 1955, so "Ann Landers" was never one person.
In One Era and Out the Other (1973)archive.org

Levenson’s memoir, where he uses the line himself on p. 21. Lending-restricted — we could not read the page.
The Rotarian, September 1967books.google.com

The September 1967 issue (Vol. 111, No. 3) — confirmed as the right issue. Quote Investigator cites the grey-hair poem, credited to Helen Gorn Sutin, on p. 51.
Erma Bombecken.wikipedia.org

The humorist (1927–1996) often given the credit, who said she got the line off a bumper sticker.
W. C. Fieldsen.wikipedia.org

The actor and comedian (1880–1946) a 1968 newspaper column credited with the joke — Quote Investigator found no substantive support.

The author

About Sam Levenson

Sam Levenson

1911–1980 · American humorist, teacher and television host

Samuel Levenson was an American humorist, writer, teacher, television host and journalist. He grew up in a large Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn, graduated from Brooklyn College in 1934 and taught high-school Spanish for fifteen years before comedy became the job. From 1949 he was a fixture on CBS — a panellist on This Is Show Business, host of Two for the Money and of The Sam Levenson Show, and a guest on The Ed Sullivan Show twenty-one times. His material was almost entirely domestic: parents, children, relatives and the indignities of both. That is why this joke is so plausibly his, and why it travelled so well without him.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Earliest located printing: Connie Nelson, “Strayed From the Heard,” The Ada Weekly News (Ada, OK), April 6, 1961, 4, crediting Sam Levenson. See also Walter Winchell, “Walter Winchell’s America,” San Diego Union, April 7, 1961, A16; and Sam Levenson, In One Era and Out the Other (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973), 21. The Ann Landers printing: Ann Landers, “Everyone Obeys This Letter of the Laws,” The Sun Telegram (San Bernardino, CA), March 26, 1978, C2. Chronology and citations per Garson O’Toole, Quote Investigator, “Insanity Is Hereditary. You Can Get It from Your Children” (September 11, 2015); the newspaper pages themselves sit in subscription archives we could not access.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Insanity Is Hereditary. You Can Get It from Your Children’?” Last verified 30 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/insanity-is-hereditary-you-can-get-it-from-your-children/

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