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Who really said it

Not one shred of evidence exists that life is serious

Not Joseph Campbell — actually Brendan Gill Brendan Gill 1914–1997 · New Yorker writer and critic for six decades
Disputed In copyright

Brendan Gill wrote the sentence in his 1975 memoir Here at The New Yorker (Random House), chapter 6, page 49 — but with a different noun and a qualifier attached: ‘in favor of the argument that life is serious, though it is often hard and even terrible’. The trimmed ten-word wording quoted here was pinned on Joseph Campbell in a Usenet message of 29 March 1993, after Campbell’s death in 1987 (Quote Investigator ↗).

Last verified 24 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Not one shred of evidence exists that life is serious” Not Joseph Campbell. Brendan Gill wrote it in "Here at The New Yorker" (New York: Random House, 1975), chapter 6, page 49 — as "not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the argument that life is serious, though it is often hard and even terrible." The trimmed version credited to Campbell is first documented in a Usenet message of 29 March 1993. — Quotle.info · Verbatim: “In fact, not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the argument that life is serious, though it is often hard and even terrible.”

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

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Brendan Gill / Random House). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Brendan Gill — New Yorker writer, drama and architecture critic. Theme: "Not one shred of evidence exists that life is serious". 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 "Not one shred of evidence exists that life is serious". 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

Where the sentence actually comes from

Work
Here at The New Yorker
Published
Random House, New York, 1975 — chapter 6, page 49
Author
Brendan Gill (1914–1997), New Yorker staff writer and critic
Status
Genuine sentence, wrong author and wrong wording — Gill wrote ‘argument’, not ‘idea’, and the Campbell form is a later trimming

In fact, not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the argument that life is serious, though it is often hard and even terrible. In copyright — excerpt trimmed

Gill’s sentence opens the passage he is best remembered for: it runs on into a short set of ‘rules of life’ drawn from the fact that everything ends in death. The 1975 book is still under copyright, so only the sentence under examination is reproduced here; the full paragraph is transcribed at Quote Investigator ↗.

Book scan
Here at the New Yorker, Random House 1975, at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator: the full chronology, Gill to Campbell to Nash

The paper trail, in order

  • 1975 — Brendan Gill publishes Here at The New Yorker with Random House. On page 49 of chapter 6 he writes the sentence, with the qualifier ‘though it is often hard and even terrible’ attached; Quote Investigator verified the page on paper (Quote Investigator ↗). The first edition is scanned at the Internet Archive ↗.
  • 1979 — John Peers’s compilation 1,001 Logical Laws prints it on page 120 as ‘Gill’s Law’, with ‘idea’ substituted for Gill’s ‘argument’ and the qualifier dropped. This is the version most quote sites still carry (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • 29 March 1993 — a message in the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.diplomacy carries a further-streamlined ten-word version — the wording asked about here — credited to Joseph Campbell. It is the earliest Campbell-credited instance Quote Investigator cites (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • By January 2010 — Wayback Machine captures cited by Quote Investigator show yet another variant circulating under Ogden Nash’s name; QI notes it was probably in circulation considerably earlier (Quote Investigator ↗).
In copyright

Here at The New Yorker was first published by Random House in New York in 1975, as the Internet Archive catalogue record ↗ and the Open Library work record ↗ both confirm. A 1975 book is far past the pre-1931 line for the United States public domain, so both the memoir and this sentence remain in copyright; the sentence is reproduced here only as the subject of the attribution check.

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

Four names, none of them the author

This sentence has been credited to a mythographer, a light-verse poet and a German philosopher — and even the version credited to the right man has the wrong word in it. Each variant is a further edit of one paragraph written in 1975.

Joseph Campbell Usenet, 1993

The streamlined form — ‘Not one shred of evidence exists that life is serious’ — is first documented in a message to the newsgroup rec.games.diplomacy dated 29 March 1993, where it carries Campbell’s name and no source (Quote Investigator ↗). Campbell died in 1987, and the line is absent from Wikiquote’s Joseph Campbell page ↗ altogether — it is not even listed among his disputed quotations.

Ogden Nash by January 2010

A third variant — ‘There is not a shred of evidence that life is serious’ — was circulating under Nash’s name by January 2010 according to Wayback Machine captures, and Quote Investigator notes it was probably in circulation considerably earlier (Quote Investigator ↗). Nash died in 1971, and Wikiquote ↗ does not record the line for him.

Friedrich Nietzsche crowd-sourced

The anonymous variant ‘Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious’ sits on Goodreads ↗ under Nietzsche’s name with no book, essay or year cited. Goodreads notes on that same page that its quotations are added by users and are not verified.

Brendan Gill, mis-worded 1979

The form usually reproduced — ‘in favor of the idea that life is serious’ — is still not what Gill wrote. He wrote argument, and he did not stop there. The substitution is documented as far back as John Peers’s 1979 compilation 1,001 Logical Laws, which prints it on page 120 under the heading ‘Gill’s Law’ with the qualifier removed (Quote Investigator ↗).

The sentence is Brendan Gill’s, from Here at The New Yorker (Random House, 1975), chapter 6, page 49 — and in Gill’s own words the phrase runs ‘in favor of the argument that life is serious, though it is often hard and even terrible’, a page Quote Investigator verified on paper (Quote Investigator ↗).

Context

A joke that outgrew its author

The line survives because it is a good joke with a sting in it, and because it is short enough to fit on a fridge magnet. Both qualities also make it easy to detach from whoever wrote it. Brendan Gill was a New Yorker writer with six decades at the magazine, and he set the sentence down in 1975 as the opening move of a small, cheerfully bleak argument — that since everything ends in death, the first rule of life is to enjoy it and the second is to hurt as few people as possible while you do.

What travelled was not Gill’s sentence but a series of improvements on it. A 1979 aphorism collection swapped ‘argument’ for ‘idea’ and rebranded it ‘Gill’s Law’. By 1993 a Usenet poster had cut the qualifier and the attribution both, and hung the remainder on Joseph Campbell — a mythographer in whose published work nobody has since located it (Quote Investigator ↗).

Gill wrote ‘argument’, and added that life is often hard and even terrible. Everything after that is other people’s editing.

Why the Campbell version is the one that stuck

Each hop made the line punchier and less traceable. Gill’s original is a clause inside a longer thought, hedged by an admission that life is often hard and even terrible. John Peers’s 1979 compilation cut the hedge and made it a ‘law’. The 1993 Usenet version cut it again, down to ten words. A shorter sentence carries further and holds an author’s name more loosely.

Joseph Campbell was a plausible host for it. He was an American professor and writer known above all for comparative mythology and comparative religion — a man associated with story, symbol and the limits of literal fact — so a one-line dismissal of seriousness sounds like something he might have said. That is the usual mechanism: a quotation drifts towards the best-known name it could credibly belong to, and Gill, a working magazine writer, was never going to win that contest.

Explore

Filed under

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

Happiness Wisdom Simplicity

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 Origin: Not a Shred of Evidence Exists in Favor of the Argument That Life Is Seriousquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: Gill’s 1975 page 49 verified on paper, the 1979 ‘idea’ swap in 1,001 Logical Laws, the 1993 Usenet post that credited Campbell, and the later Ogden Nash variant.
Here at the New Yorker (Random House, 1975)archive.org

Scan of the first edition — the book containing the sentence on page 49. Borrowable through the Internet Archive’s lending programme.
Brendan Gillen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the actual author: sixty years at The New Yorker from 1936, over 1,200 pieces, the Skyline column 1987–1996, and his preservation campaigns.
Joseph Campbellen.wikiquote.org

Campbell’s sourced and disputed quotations. Useful as a negative check: this line does not appear anywhere on the page.
Ogden Nashen.wikiquote.org

The second false claimant. Nash’s Misattributed section lists other lines wrongly pinned on him, but not this one — neither ‘shred of evidence’ nor ‘life is serious’ appears.
‘Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious’www.goodreads.com

A third variant, filed under Friedrich Nietzsche with no book named. Goodreads states on the page that its quotes are community-added and not verified.

The author

About Brendan Gill

Brendan Gill

1914–1997 · New Yorker writer, drama and architecture critic

Brendan Gill joined The New Yorker in 1936 and stayed for more than sixty years, writing over 1,200 pieces — Profiles, Talk of the Town, and years of Broadway and Off-Broadway reviewing — before serving as the magazine’s principal architecture critic and author of its Skyline column from 1987 to 1996. Away from the desk he was one of New York’s most effective preservationists, joining Jacqueline Kennedy’s coalition to save Grand Central Terminal and chairing both the Municipal Art Society and the New York Landmarks Conservancy. Here at The New Yorker (1975), the memoir that carries this sentence, is the book he is still most quoted from — usually with someone else’s name attached.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Original source

Brendan Gill, Here at The New Yorker (New York: Random House, 1975), chapter 6, page 49 — verified on paper by Quote Investigator. The wording credited to Joseph Campbell, ‘Not one shred of evidence exists that life is serious’, is a later streamlining; the earliest Campbell-credited instance Quote Investigator cites is a Usenet message to rec.games.diplomacy dated 29 March 1993.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Not one shred of evidence exists that life is serious’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/not-one-shred-of-evidence-exists-that-life-is-serious/

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