No one has ever been able to name the author. Quote Investigator ↗ finds a longer version already running in the Lubbock Morning Avalanche in February 1944 — “One war that will never be won by either side is the continual war between the sexes…there is so much fraternizing with the enemy on the part of both sides” — and concludes that “a prolix version of this joke was circulating by 1944, and the creator was unknown. The wording evolved over the years to become more concise.” Ann Landers ran the quip in her column in 1958 without attribution, which is how her name became attached to it.
“Nobody Will Ever Win the Battle of the Sexes. There's Too Much Fraternizing with the Enemy” Anonymous — earliest known appearance in the Lubbock Morning Avalanche, February 1944. Not Ann Landers, who printed it unattributed in 1958, and not Henry Kissinger, credited as a joke in 1979 · Verbatim: “One war that will never be won by either side is the continual war between the sexes…there is so much fraternizing with the enemy on the part of both sides.”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Ann Landers. 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 love, truth and power. Theme: "Nobody Will Ever Win the Battle of the Sexes. There's Too Much Fraternizing with the Enemy". 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 "Nobody Will Ever Win the Battle of the Sexes. There's Too Much Fraternizing with the Enemy". 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 earliest known appearance
Earliest citation
Lubbock Morning Avalanche
Date
February 1944, unsigned
Author
Unknown — no name has ever been attached to the earliest versions
Ann Landers’s use
1958, in her column, with no attribution
One war that will never be won by either side is the continual war between the sexes…there is so much fraternizing with the enemy on the part of both sides.
1944
The earliest form Quote Investigator ↗ could locate, from the Lubbock Morning Avalanche of February 1944. The modern one-liner is this sentence with thirty years of trimming applied by anonymous hands.
Quote Investigator ↗ dates the earliest version to the Lubbock Morning Avalanche, February 1944, and gives further unsigned appearances in the Covina Argus-Citizen (August 1945), the Charleroi Mail (September 1945) and the Omaha World Herald (1946).
Its conclusion is unambiguous: “A prolix version of this joke was circulating by 1944, and the creator was unknown. The wording evolved over the years to become more concise.”
The anonymity was noted at the time. QI records This Week Magazine crediting only an unnamed “West Coast wit” in December 1948, Changing Times printing it anonymously in 1962, and Evan Esar’s 20,000 Quips and Quotes listing it as anonymous in 1968.
Ann Landers appears in QI’s chronology at 1958, using the quip in her column without attribution — fourteen years after it was already in print, and as a user rather than an author.
The Henry Kissinger credit is later still and began as a joke: QI records Robert Orben facetiously crediting him in The Book of Quotes in 1979, with the columnist Liz Smith repeating the attribution in 1988.
The wording has no identifiable author and no single source document — it evolved anonymously across American newspapers from 1944 onward. quotle.info therefore asserts no rights status for it rather than guessing: an unsigned 1944 newspaper filler is not something we can responsibly call 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
Three names have been attached to this joke at different times. None of them wrote it.
~
The usual creditAnn Landers Popularizer, not author
She ran the quip in 1958 without attribution, per QI’s chronology ↗ — fourteen years after its earliest known printing. Printing a joke is not writing one.
✕
The modern creditHenry Kissinger Began as a gag
QI records Robert Orben crediting Kissinger in The Book of Quotes (1979) in what reads as a joke, with Liz Smith repeating it in 1988. The quip was already running in American newspapers in February 1944, thirty-five years before the credit appeared.
✕
An earlier wrong guessJames Thurber No evidence
Bennett Cerf’s 1953 column attached a version to Thurber, per QI ↗. That is still nine years after the Lubbock Morning Avalanche printed it unsigned.
~
What the record actually showsAn unnamed newspaper wit Context
Contemporary editors did not know either: This Week Magazine credited only a “West Coast wit” in 1948, and both Changing Times (1962) and Evan Esar’s quotation dictionary (1968) printed it as anonymous.
✓The joke is older than all three of its famous owners and belongs to none of them. It was anonymous in 1944, anonymous in 1948, anonymous in 1968 — and it only acquired an author once it was famous enough to be worth claiming.
Context
Why it mattered
The joke is a wartime artefact, and it shows. “Fraternizing with the enemy” was a live phrase in February 1944 — a disciplinary offence with real penalties — and the gag works by borrowing that menace and deflating it. The 1944 wording is explicit about the mechanism in a way the modern one-liner is not: the war between the sexes cannot be won because neither side wants to.
What happened to it afterwards is the more interesting story. Over thirty years anonymous hands cut a thirty-word observation down to a thirteen-word epigram, and an epigram that good starts to look as though someone clever must have said it.
A prolix version of this joke was circulating by 1944, and the creator was unknown.
Read the full story
The chronology is a tidy demonstration of how attribution works in practice. From 1944 to 1968 the joke circulates unsigned, and every source that handles it says so — “a West Coast wit,” “anonymous.” Then in 1979 a gag writer attaches a famous name to it for comic effect, and in 1988 a columnist repeats the name without the comedy. At that point the joke has an author, and the thirty-five years of documented anonymity behind it stop being visible to anyone who is not looking.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Pen name, created 1943 · American newspaper advice column
Ann Landers was never one person. The pen name was created by the Chicago Sun-Times columnist Ruth Crowley in 1943 and taken over by Esther “Eppie” Lederer in 1955, who wrote it until 2002. The column’s daily appetite for brisk, quotable lines made it one of the great laundering machines of American humour: a joke printed there without a source would be remembered as hers, which is exactly what happened here.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Best available citation
Earliest documented appearance: unsigned item, Lubbock Morning Avalanche (Lubbock, TX), February 1944, as cited in Quote Investigator, “Nobody Will Ever Win the Battle of the Sexes. There’s Too Much Fraternizing with the Enemy,” 2 July 2014.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Nobody Will Ever Win the Battle of the Sexes. There’s Too Much Fraternizing with the Enemy’?” Last verified 1 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/nobody-will-ever-win-the-battle-of-the-sexes-theres-too/