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Who really said it

Now We’re Just Haggling Over the Price

Not Bertrand Russell — an anonymous joke Unknown — a circulating anecdote Earliest documented telling: New York Post, 6 June 1936 · told of Lord Beaverbrook
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

No source ties this line to Bertrand Russell. Quote Investigator ↗ lists Russell as one of the famous men the role has been assigned to — alongside Churchill, Shaw, Groucho Marx, Mark Twain, W. C. Fields, H. G. Wells and Woodrow Wilson — and finds that the earliest example of the story it has located, a June 1936 column in the “New York Post”, features none of them. It tells the joke of the press baron Lord Beaverbrook, and its punch line is not “haggling over the price” at all.

Last verified 1 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Now We’re Just Haggling Over the Price” Not Bertrand Russell. An anonymous joke: the earliest documented telling (Leonard Lyons, "Lyons Den," New York Post, 6 June 1936) tells it of Lord Beaverbrook and ends "Now we're trying to determine the degree." Traced by Quote Investigator. Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “We've already established that. Now we're just haggling over the price.”

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

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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

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Provenance

The earliest documented telling

Earliest printing
“Lyons Den” by Leonard Lyons, New York Post
Date
6 June 1936 (quote page 13, column 7)
Figure in the joke
Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken) — not Bertrand Russell
Punch line as printed
“Now we’re trying to determine the degree” — not “haggling over the price”

They’re telling this of Lord Beaverbrook and a visiting Yankee actress. In a game of hypothetical questions, Beaverbrook asked the lady: “Would you live with a stranger if he paid you £1,000,000?” She answered “Yes.” “And if he paid you £5?” The irate lady fumed: “£5? What do you think I am?” Beaverbrook replied: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re trying to determine the degree.”

The 1936 column as transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗. Note the euphemism: the column says “live with” rather than “sleep with”, in keeping with what a 1936 newspaper would print. And note that the telling is already second-hand — “They’re telling this of Lord Beaverbrook.”

Quote Investigator: the full chronology, 1936–1985

How the line travelled

  • 1936. Newspaper columnist Leonard Lyons prints the story in the New York Post, told of Lord Beaverbrook. This is the earliest example Quote Investigator ↗ has located, and it names none of the men the joke is credited to today. Two weeks later, on 19 June, the Evening Review of Niagara Falls, Ontario, reprints Lyons with an acknowledgement — the joke has crossed the border before any famous name is attached.
  • 1937. It goes national: syndicated columnist O. O. McIntyre carries the story on 2 January 1937, a citation documented in the American Dialect Society research thread ↗ that preceded the QI article, and the University of Michigan humour magazine Gargoyle runs a matching version that April, dated by Quote Investigator ↗.
  • 1955–1962. In QI’s chronology the “haggling” wording first appears in a US House subcommittee hearing of 12 October 1955, used as an allusion to a story the room already knows; by January 1962 a newspaper letter credits it to Churchill ↗.
  • Today. Wikiquote carries an un-named version of the joke in the Misattributed section of its Shaw ↗ page, sourced to the 1936 Beaverbrook telling, though the Shaw-named dialogue still sits under Disputed; on the Churchill ↗ page it survives only as an unsourced Talk-page anecdote, where a 2020 request to move it to the article’s Misattributed box is still unactioned. Churchill historian Richard Langworth calls the Churchill telling “Pure nonsense” ↗. No comparable defence has ever been mounted for the Russell version, because no source exists to defend.

No rights status can honestly be asserted here. The punch line is an anonymous joke with no identified author, so there is no work whose first publication date would settle it. The earliest documented printing is a 1936 newspaper column by Leonard Lyons, and whether that column’s US copyright was renewed — the question that decides the status of American works published in 1936 — has not been established here.

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

A joke with a revolving cast

This is not a quotation with one wrong owner — it is a joke that has been fitted to whichever famous man a teller finds convenient. Quote Investigator ↗ names eight of them, and finds an early telling that uses none.

Bertrand Russell No source at all

Russell is one of the eight famous men Quote Investigator ↗ lists as having been assigned the role. Its chronology — running from 1936 to 1985 — contains no telling that features Russell, and no letter, book, lecture or interview of his has been produced for it.

Winston Churchill Debunked

A letter in the Nevada State Journal of 20 January 1962 credits the punch line to Churchill, one of the earliest namings QI records. Churchill historian Richard Langworth calls the story “Pure nonsense” ↗ with no attribution to Churchill. Wikiquote’s Churchill talk page ↗ goes less far: it files the exchange among unsourced anecdotes, calling it “a very old joke” and “very unlikely though not impossible” as a Churchill original, and the article itself carries no entry for it either way.

George Bernard Shaw Debunked

John Allen Paulos still credited Shaw in 1985 while admitting the joke “seems more appropriate with Groucho.” In July 2013 Wikiquote editors ↗ cited QI and added the anecdote to Shaw’s Misattributed section — though the Shaw-named dialogue still sits under Disputed on the article today.

Groucho Marx, Mark Twain, W. C. Fields, H. G. Wells, Woodrow Wilson Interchangeable

Gershon Legman’s Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1968) already described it as a story told of almost every modern celebrity beginning with President Wilson and H. G. Wells ↗ — which is the clearest sign that the famous name is decoration, not evidence.

The earliest example Quote Investigator ↗ has located is a 6 June 1936 “Lyons Den” column in the New York Post, told of Lord Beaverbrook and an unnamed actress — and even there the punch line is “Now we’re trying to determine the degree.” The “haggling over the price” wording, and every famous name now attached to it, came later.

Context

Why every clever man gets credited with it

The joke has one structural requirement: the man delivering the punch line must be famous enough for cruelty to read as wit. That is why the cast keeps rotating. Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Groucho Marx, Mark Twain, W. C. Fields, H. G. Wells and Woodrow Wilson have all been dropped into the role, and the woman — the actual target of the line — almost never gets a name at all.

The wording drifted as much as the cast did. The 1936 telling ends “Now we’re trying to determine the degree,” which is stiffer and less quotable than what replaced it. In Quote Investigator’s chronology ↗ the “haggling” phrasing does not surface until a US House subcommittee hearing of 12 October 1955, where a congressman uses it as shorthand for a story he assumes everyone already knows. By then it needed no set-up, and no author.

The famous name is the interchangeable part. The joke is the fixed one.

How the joke travelled, 1936–1985

6 June 1936 — Leonard Lyons prints it in the “Lyons Den” column of the New York Post, told of Lord Beaverbrook and “a visiting Yankee actress.” This is the earliest example Quote Investigator ↗ has found.

1937 — It spreads: a Niagara Falls paper reprints Lyons in June 1936, syndicated columnist O. O. McIntyre reprints it on 2 January 1937, and the University of Michigan humour magazine Gargoyle runs a close match that April.

1944–1946 — Coronet, Reader’s Digest, the trade journal Excavating Engineer and the lawyers’ magazine Case and Comment all carry versions; the anonymous-lawyer variant moves the scene to a courtroom.

1955–1962 — The punch line detaches from the story. A congressman alludes to it in a 1955 hearing; sociologist Peter L. Berger prints a full “haggling over the price” version in The Precarious Vision (1961); and a January 1962 letter in the Nevada State Journal credits it to Winston Churchill.

1965–1985 — Arthur Herzog calls it an “old joke”; Gershon Legman’s Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1968) says it has been told of almost every modern celebrity beginning with Wilson and H. G. Wells; and John Allen Paulos, printing it in 1985, openly swaps Shaw out for Groucho because it suits Groucho better.

Explore

Filed under

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

Character Truth Power

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: Now We're Just Haggling Over the Pricequoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: the 1936 Beaverbrook telling, the full chronology to 1985, and the conclusion that the anecdote began as a fictional joke.
Wikiquote talk page: Winston Churchillen.wikiquote.org

Editors discuss the Churchill telling, call it “a very old joke where the participants vary dramatically from each telling,” and one editor asks — so far unanswered — that it be moved to the article’s Misattributed box.
Wikiquote talk page: George Bernard Shawen.wikiquote.org

The parallel Shaw discussion — in July 2013 editors cite Quote Investigator and add the anecdote to the article’s Misattributed section.
Richard Langworth: Fake Churchill Quotesrichardlangworth.com

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project’s Senior Fellow on the five-pounds story: “Pure nonsense”, with no attribution to Churchill.
American Dialect Society list: anecdote with punchlinelistserv.linguistlist.org

The December 2011 research thread that preceded the QI article, documenting the 1937 McIntyre syndication and the early Beaverbrook citations.
Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrooken.wikipedia.org

Background on the press baron named in the earliest telling: 1879–1964, proprietor of the Daily Express, Minister of Aircraft Production.

The first famous name attached

The man the joke was first told about

Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook

1879–1964 · Canadian-British newspaper publisher & wartime minister

William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (25 May 1879 – 9 June 1964) was a Canadian-born press baron who owned the Daily Express and the Evening Standard and served in British government as Minister of Aircraft Production and Lord Privy Seal. He is the earliest famous name known to be attached to this joke — but attached is all it is. The 1936 column that first prints it opens “They’re telling this of Lord Beaverbrook,” which is a columnist repeating gossip, not a witness recording a remark. Beaverbrook has no better claim to the line than Russell does; he was simply first in a queue of interchangeable famous men.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented telling

Earliest documented in Leonard Lyons, “Lyons Den,” New York Post, June 6, 1936, quote page 13, column 7. Cited in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Now We’re Just Haggling Over the Price,” March 7, 2012 (updated October 30, 2024).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Now We’re Just Haggling Over the Price’?” Last verified 1 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/now-were-just-haggling-over-the-price/

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