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Who really said it

Like two bald men fighting over a comb

Not coined by Tolstoy — an older, anonymous fable No single originator An anonymous saying · traced by Quote Investigator to a fable recorded by Phaedrus, in French print by 1792, in Tolstoy’s Russian primer by 1874
Disputed — Tolstoy printed it, but he did not coin it. The fable is centuries older and the origin is anonymous. Rights unconfirmed

Tolstoy really did print the simile: it closes a short proverb-lesson on page 48 of his 1874 Azbuka (ABC Book), and from 1888 American newspapers were crediting him with it. But Quote Investigator conjectures he was sharing an existing cultural expression with anonymous provenance and did not craft the simile — a comb version was already circulating in French by 1792, and the ancestor is a fable recorded by Phaedrus. Jorge Luis Borges was applying the simile to the Falklands by 1983 — the modern use most often pointed to, though the figure of speech was in English print long before him.

Last verified 10 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Like two bald men fighting over a comb” Not coined by Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy printed the simile in his 1874 ABC book Azbuka (page 48), but Quote Investigator conjectures he was relaying an existing saying of anonymous provenance — a fable recorded by Phaedrus is its ancestor, and a version about a comb was circulating in French by 1792 in Florian's 'Les deux Chauves.' Jorge Luis Borges applied it to the Falklands in 1983 — 'The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb,' reported in The Miami News, 9 February 1983. Source: quoteinvestigator.com/2019/05/23/comb/

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Leo Tolstoy. 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.

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In context

Evoking the themes of power, wisdom and humility. Theme: "Like two bald men fighting over a comb". 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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Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

Where Tolstoy printed it
Azbuka (ABC Book)
Published
St. Petersburg: Tip. K. Zamyslovskago, 1874 — the passage on page 48
Translation
English rendering by Quote Investigator (2019). An 1888 U.S. newspaper version reads “two bald men who fought for possession of a comb.”
Status
Not Tolstoy’s coinage — Quote Investigator conjectures he was relaying an existing saying of anonymous provenance

Two people on the street together found a book and began to argue about it. A third one asked: ‘Which of you is literate?’ They said: ‘No one; both of us are illiterate.’ Two bald men are fighting for a comb. A proverb, not a coinage

Page 48 of Tolstoy’s Azbuka (1874), in Quote Investigator’s English rendering of the Russian. Note the shape of it: the simile is the punchline of a tiny proverb-lesson, delivered the way one delivers a saying everybody already knows — not launched as an original aphorism.

1874 printing, scanned
Tolstoy’s Azbuka (1874) on the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator: the full citation history

The paper trail, in order

  • Antiquity — a fable transmitted under the name of the Roman fabulist Phaedrus, Book 5, “The Two Bald Men”: “As on his way a Bald-pate went, / He found a comb by accident; / Another, with a head as bare, / Pursued, and hollow’d for a share.” The two men commiserate over a find neither can use — they do not fight (Perseus Digital Library ↗).
  • 1792 — the commiseration has curdled into a brawl. In Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian’s fable Les deux Chauves, two bald men spot a glint of ivory, come to blows, and the winner loses the few grey hairs he had left — his prize is a comb (French text on Wikisource ↗). Quote Investigator documents an English translation printed in 1806 as “The Two Bald Heads.”
  • 1874 — Tolstoy includes the simile on page 48 of Azbuka, his primer for Russian children, printed in St. Petersburg by Tip. K. Zamyslovskago (Internet Archive catalogue record ↗).
  • 1888 onward — the Atchison Daily Champion prints the story in English and credits Tolstoy; The New York Times repeats it in 1896; H. L. Mencken files it in 1942 under “Futility” as a “RUSSIAN SAYING”; and by 1983 Jorge Luis Borges is applying it to the Falklands (Quote Investigator ↗).

No rights status can honestly be asserted for the famous English wording: it is a proverbial simile with no identified author and no identified first work, so there is nothing to attach a copyright to. The Russian text Tolstoy printed in 1874 is long in the public domain — but the English rendering quoted above is Quote Investigator’s own 2019 translation, and belongs to its translator, not to Tolstoy.

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

Who gets the credit, and who has earned it

This line gets pinned on Tolstoy, on Borges, and on “an old Russian proverb” more or less interchangeably. Some of that is fair, and some of it is a translation of Tolstoy’s fame into authorship he never claimed.

Leo Tolstoy Half right

He genuinely printed it — in Russian, on page 48 of the 1874 Azbuka — and American papers were crediting him with it from 1888. But Quote Investigator conjectures Tolstoy was sharing an existing cultural expression with anonymous provenance and did not craft the simile; QI’s conclusion is only that he “helped to popularize this figure of speech” (Quote Investigator ↗). Wikiquote’s Tolstoy page does not carry the line at all (Wikiquote ↗).

Jorge Luis Borges He said it; he didn’t invent it

Borges applied the simile to the Falklands conflict: “The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.” Wikiquote sources the remark to Time, 14 February 1983 (Wikiquote ↗); Quote Investigator documents it in The Miami News of 9 February 1983. Either way the figure of speech was in English print long before he reached for it.

“A Russian saying” How reference books filed it

H. L. Mencken’s A New Dictionary of Quotations (1942) lists “Two baldhead men are fighting over a comb.” under the topic Futility, labelled simply “RUSSIAN SAYING”; James Reston used it as a Russian proverb in The New York Times in 1955 (Quote Investigator ↗). Neither treated it as anyone’s quotation.

French and Roman fabulists Older still

The bald men were quarrelling in French before they ever quarrelled in Russian — Florian’s Les deux Chauves has them fighting over the ivory glint that turns out to be a comb (Wikisource ↗), and the ancestor is a fable carried under Phaedrus’s name (Perseus ↗).

Quote Investigator’s verdict: the simile evolved from the fable recorded by Phaedrus, a version about an ivory comb was circulating by 1792, Tolstoy helped popularize it in his 1874 primer, and Borges employed it by 1983 — with the original authorship staying anonymous throughout (Quote Investigator ↗).

Context

Why the bald men changed sides

Most quote sites file this under Tolstoy, and unlike the usual run of Tolstoy misattributions it is not an invention: the simile really is in his ABC book, printed for Russian children to read aloud. What is invented is the idea that it started with him.

The fable’s ancestor runs the other way round. In the version carried under Phaedrus’s name, one bald man finds a comb, a second catches up and demands a share, and the joke is that they console each other over a windfall neither can possibly use. Nobody throws a punch. Somewhere between antiquity and the eighteenth century the commiseration curdled into a brawl, and by 1792 Florian had the two of them coming to blows over a glint of ivory — the victor stripped of the last grey hairs he had, holding a comb.

They started out as fellow sufferers. Only later did they start fighting.

How the phrase travelled into English

In English the phrase travelled as a proverb rather than a quotation. Mencken filed it in 1942 under “Futility” as a Russian saying; James Reston reached for it in The New York Times in 1955 as a Russian proverb. Neither man treated it as a line with an author, which is exactly how proverbs behave.

Borges is the modern use most often pointed to, and it is worth being exact about what he did. Asked about the Falklands, he called the war “a fight between two bald men over a comb” — a noun phrase rather than the simile in this page’s headline, and no closer to that form than Mencken’s 1942 entry or Reston’s 1955 question. Quote Investigator claims no more for him than that he employed the figure of speech by 1983. The internet has handed the line to Tolstoy regardless, which is roughly how attribution drift usually works: the more famous name absorbs the better line.

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Filed under

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

Power Wisdom Humility

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Quote Origin: Like Two Bald Men Fighting Over a Combquoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative investigation. Traces the simile from Phaedrus through Florian (1792), Tolstoy’s 1874 Azbuka, Mencken (1942) and Borges (1983), with full footnote citations for each.
Tolstoy, Azbuka (1874) — scanned originalarchive.org

The Internet Archive’s scan and catalogue record for the St. Petersburg 1874 printing (Tip. K. Zamyslovskago) — the same edition Quote Investigator cites for page 48.
Florian, “Les Deux Chauves”fr.wikisource.org

Full French text of the fable in which two bald men fight over a piece of ivory and the winner’s prize turns out to be a comb.
Phaedrus, Book 5: “The Two Bald Men”perseus.tufts.edu

The classical ancestor, in verse translation — the version where the two bald men commiserate over the comb instead of fighting for it.
Jorge Luis Borges — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sources the Falklands remark, “a fight between two bald men over a comb,” to Time, 14 February 1983.
ADS-L: Simile — like bald men fighting over a comblistserv.linguistlist.org

Garson O’Toole’s post to the American Dialect Society list laying out the citation trail, with credit to researchers Nigel Rees and Peter Reitan for the earlier finds.

The name on the quote

About Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

1828–1910 · Russian novelist and educator — author of War and Peace and of the Azbuka primer

Tolstoy compiled Azbuka, an ABC book for Russian children, in the same years he was writing his great novels; the Internet Archive holds a St. Petersburg printing of 1874, and page 48 carries the bald-men line as the moral of a two-sentence exchange about an illiterate pair squabbling over a book. He was working in the register of the folk proverb there, gathering sayings and riddles for children to learn from — which is precisely why Quote Investigator concludes he was relaying an expression that already existed rather than minting one. The credit stuck anyway: within fifteen years American newspapers were printing the story with Tolstoy’s name attached, and it has travelled under his name ever since.

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Where it is documented

Leo Tolstoy, Azbuka [ABC Book] (St. Petersburg: Tip. K. Zamyslovskago, 1874), 48 — the passage closing, in Quote Investigator’s English rendering, “Two bald men are fighting for a comb.” Origin anonymous: Quote Investigator traces the simile to a fable recorded by Phaedrus and documents a comb version circulating by 1792 in Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian’s fable “Les deux Chauves.” Jorge Luis Borges applied the simile to the Falklands in 1983, as reported in The Miami News, 9 February 1983, and in Time, 14 February 1983.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Like two bald men fighting over a comb’?” Last verified 10 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/like-two-bald-men-fighting-over-a-comb/

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