Mencken wrote it in his column “As H. L. Sees It” in The Evening Sun of Baltimore on 18 September 1926, in a longer form: nobody has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. The snappier “went broke … the American public” wording is a later simplification — and David Ogilvy, far from coining it, quoted the saying — in its “taste of the American public” form, not the “intelligence” wording asked about here — in Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963), credited it to Mencken, and said flatly that it was not true.
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public” The familiar short form, "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public," is a later simplification and appears in no 1926 source; the sentence Mencken actually published, beginning "No one in this world, so far as I know," is from "As H. L. Sees It," The Evening Sun (Baltimore), 18 September 1926. David Ogilvy did not write either version: he quoted the saying, in its "taste of the American public" form, in Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963), credited it to Mencken, and said it was not true.
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to David Ogilvy. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
✓ Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — that clearance covers Mencken’s 1926 newspaper passage, which is the text we checked. The familiar short form is a later rephrasing with no identified author; too short to carry a copyright of its own, but present it as a paraphrase, not as a sentence from the 1926 column.
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In context
Evoking the world of H. L. Mencken — Baltimore journalist, satirist and cultural critic. Theme: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public". 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 "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public". 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 1926 column
Column
As H. L. Sees It
First published
The Evening Sun, Baltimore — 18 September 1926
Reprinted
Chicago Sunday Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle, 19 September 1926 (cited by Wikiquote as “Notes on Journalism”)
Popular wording
A later simplification, not Mencken's phrasing
No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way.
Wording drifted
Note what the familiar version loses. Mencken wrote “lost money,” not “went broke”; “the great masses of the plain people,” not “the American public”; and he added a second target — politicians — that the modern one-liner drops entirely.
18 September 1926 — the origin. Quote Investigator's study of this saying places the earliest citation in Mencken's column “As H. L. Sees It” in The Evening Sun of Baltimore, reprinted the next day in the Chicago Sunday Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle, and concludes that Mencken should receive credit for the statement he wrote in 1926 ↗.
1944 and 1951 — the wording hardens. By 2 November 1944 a letter in the Berkshire Evening Eagle of Pittsfield, Massachusetts was quoting film mogul Louis B. Mayer with “no man ever went broke by under-estimating the intelligence of the American public”; on 15 April 1951 the Cleveland Plain Dealer had Arthur L. Mayer swapping in “taste” and crediting Mencken — both documented in Quote Investigator's chronology ↗.
The passage excerpted here is Mencken's newspaper text, first published in September 1926 — before 1931 — so it is in the public domain in the United States. Two separate things are not covered by that: the shortened modern wording, which has no identified author, and David Ogilvy's Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963), which remains in copyright to Ogilvy's estate and its publishers.
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
How Ogilvy got the credit for a line he attacked
This is an unusually clean case of a quotation being credited to its most famous opponent. Ogilvy is the reason millions of people have read the sentence — but in his book he presents it as Mencken's, then immediately refutes it.
✕
The popular creditDavid Ogilvy quoted it to reject it
In Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963) Ogilvy wrote: “H. L. Mencken once said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. That is not true.” Quote Investigator presents him purely as a writer who cited the saying and disagreed with it ↗. Crediting Ogilvy inverts his actual position: the same book contains his best-known line, “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife,” cited by Wikiquote to page 96 ↗. That a quotable ad-man's book is where readers met the sentence is the most likely route by which his name replaced Mencken's — an inference, not something Quote Investigator claims.
✕
In print, 1944Louis B. Mayer the “went broke” form
A letter in the Berkshire Evening Eagle of Pittsfield, Massachusetts on 2 November 1944 quoted the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer chief with “no man ever went broke by under-estimating the intelligence of the American public,” noting he had quoted the statement with approval in a signed article in Harper's Magazine for July — so even here he is repeating, not coining ↗.
✕
In print, 1951Arthur L. Mayer swapped in “taste”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer of 15 April 1951 has the motion-picture executive saying “no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public!” — and he credited Mencken, correctly ↗. This is the branch of the family tree Ogilvy later quoted.
✓The thought is H. L. Mencken's, written in a newspaper column dated 18 September 1926; the wording most people quote is a later, anonymous compression of it, and David Ogilvy’s only role was to reprint the saying in order to argue that it was false ↗.
Context
Why this one keeps getting re-credited
The line is the perfect epigraph for an advertising cynic, so it drifted toward the most famous advertising name available. The irony is that Ogilvy built his whole practice on the opposite premise — research, respect, and the assumption that the reader is at least as smart as the writer. Pinning the sentence on him is a little like crediting a prosecutor with the crime.
Mencken, by contrast, meant it. He published it in the same year as Notes on Democracy, and his version aims at two targets rather than one: nobody has lost money by underestimating the plain people, and nobody has lost public office that way either. The advertising world kept the first half and quietly dropped the political half — which is how a remark about democracy became a remark about marketing.
Ogilvy is not the author of this line. He is its most famous critic.
Read the full story
Three separate things changed on the way to the modern quotation: “lost money” became “went broke,” “the great masses of the plain people” became “the American public,” and the clause about losing public office vanished. Each change makes the sentence punchier and less specific — the standard signature of a quotation that has been passed hand to hand rather than copied from a page.
A fourth variant runs alongside the one asked about here: “taste” in place of “intelligence.” That is the form Arthur L. Mayer used in 1951 and the form Ogilvy quoted in 1963. If you have seen this saying attributed to Ogilvy, you have most likely seen the “taste” version, because his book is where it circulated most widely.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1880–1956 · Baltimore journalist, satirist and cultural critic
Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956) spent most of his working life at the Baltimore Sun papers, where he built a reputation as the most quotable and least sentimental critic in American journalism. He wrote the multi-volume study The American Language and, in the same year as this line, the book-length polemic Notes on Democracy — a sustained argument that popular opinion is a poor guide to anything. The remark about underestimating the plain people is not a stray wisecrack but a compressed statement of his central theme, which is exactly why it survived while its author's name fell off it.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
H. L. Mencken, “As H. L. Sees It,” The Evening Sun (Baltimore), September 18, 1926; reprinted September 19, 1926 in the Chicago Sunday Tribune (cited by Wikiquote as “Notes on Journalism”) and the San Francisco Chronicle. Chronology and attribution per Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: No One in This World Has Ever Lost Money by Underestimating the Intelligence of the Great Masses of the Plain People,” March 1, 2020.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/no-one-ever-went-broke-underestimating-the-intelligence-of/