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Who really said it

She is always kind to her inferiors. — But where does she find them?

Credited to Dorothy Parker — the Clare Boothe Luce version is doubted Dorothy Parker 1893–1967 · American poet, critic and screenwriter
Disputed In copyright

No primary record of this exchange survives. Quote Investigator ↗ traces the earliest instance it could locate to Sidney Skolsky’s Hollywood column in the Milwaukee Sentinel of 23 June 1937, where the punchline is already Dorothy Parker’s and the target is only “a prominent actress.” Even that is a gossip-column report rather than a document of Parker speaking, and the joke itself is far older than she is — Boswell records a version of it from 1770.

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“She is always kind to her inferiors. — But where does she find them?” credited to Dorothy Parker. Earliest documented instance: Sidney Skolsky's column, Milwaukee Sentinel, 23 June 1937, which prints it as "She's only kind to her inferiors" / "Where does she find them?". Via Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The New Yorker (Margaret Case Harriman’s 1941 profile) and the Milwaukee Sentinel (Sidney Skolsky’s 1937 column)). 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 Dorothy Parker — American poet, critic and screenwriter. Theme: "She is always kind to her inferiors. — But where does she find them?". 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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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "She is always kind to her inferiors. — But where does she find them?". 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 exchange actually comes from

Earliest documented instance
Hollywood — Sidney Skolsky's syndicated column
Published
Milwaukee Sentinel, 23 June 1937 — the target named only as “a prominent actress”
Familiar (Luce) version
Profiles: The Candor Kid — Part I
Ancestor
Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1791), on a conversation of 1770

At lunch the other day, a group were discussing a prominent actress and a person said: “She’s only kind to her inferiors.” Whereupon Dorothy Parker remarked: “Where does she find them?” Earliest documented, 1937

Sidney Skolsky’s Hollywood column in the Milwaukee Sentinel, 23 June 1937 — the earliest instance located by Quote Investigator ↗. Note that no name is given for the actress, and that the wording is “only kind,” not the smoother “always kind” of the version that circulates today.

Quote Investigator: the full citation history

The paper trail, in order

  • 1770 — Boswell records Samuel Johnson, told that a woman was remarkable for her “humility and condescension to inferiours,” observing “that those were very laudable qualities, but it might not be so easy to discover who the lady’s inferiours were” (Life of Johnson, Vol. 2 ↗, published 1791).
  • 1882 — Mark Twain delivers Advice to Youth, inverting the same gag onto superiors: “Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any” — his only documented contact with this joke (Wikiquote ↗).
  • 23 June 1937 — Sidney Skolsky’s Hollywood column prints the exchange with Dorothy Parker delivering the punchline and an unnamed “prominent actress” as the target — the earliest instance Quote Investigator could find (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • 4 January 1941 — Margaret Case Harriman’s New Yorker profile of Clare Boothe Luce retells it with Luce as the target and dates the dinner to “last year” — a chronology Quote Investigator finds inconsistent with the 1937 printing (Quote Investigator ↗).
  • 1946–1956 — The joke resurfaces on 4 April 1946 in The Castilian of Castile, New York, still credited to Parker, with the target renamed “Miss Smith”; by 21 June 1956, in The Whitewright Sun of Texas, every participant is anonymous (Quote Investigator ↗).
In copyright

The 18th-century ancestor is safely public domain — Boswell’s Life of Johnson was published in 1791. The exchange in its modern form, however, is documented only in 20th-century periodicals: Skolsky’s column of 1937 and Harriman’s New Yorker profile of 1941, both well after 1931, so those texts are treated as in-copyright to their publishers. Because no primary record of Parker speaking the line exists, no earlier public-domain source can be claimed for it.

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 earned it

Quote Investigator opens its study of this exchange with a row of candidate names: Dorothy Parker, Mark Twain, Samuel Johnson, Sidney Skolsky, Margaret Case Harriman, Anonymous — a list that mixes possible speakers, older precursors and the two journalists who printed the item. Only Dorothy Parker has a dated citation as the speaker of this exchange.

Mark Twain Unsupported

No instance of this exchange appears in Twain’s work, and Quote Investigator ↗ locates no Twain citation for it — it lists him for a variant, not for this dialogue. What Twain actually wrote is the mirror-image joke — “Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any” — in his 1882 talk Advice to Youth, which questions the existence of superiors, not inferiors (Wikiquote ↗).

Clare Boothe Luce Doubted

The version everyone repeats names Luce, and comes from Margaret Case Harriman’s New Yorker profile of 4 January 1941, which places the dinner “last year.” But the punchline was already in print as Parker’s in June 1937, and the 1937 item calls the target “a prominent actress” — a description that fits the actress Claire Luce far better than the playwright of The Women (Quote Investigator ↗).

Samuel Johnson 1770

Boswell records Johnson, asked to write a funeral sermon and told the deceased was remarkable for her “humility and condescension to inferiours,” replying that those were laudable qualities but that it might not be easy to discover who the lady’s inferiours were (Life of Johnson, Vol. 2 ↗). In the 1700s “condescension” meant courtesy across ranks, not contempt.

As far as the printed record goes, the exchange belongs to Dorothy Parker — first documented in Sidney Skolsky’s column of 23 June 1937, with an unnamed actress as the target — and the joke itself is older than Twain, Parker and the movies alike (Quote Investigator ↗).

Context

Why this joke keeps finding new owners

The gag is a trapdoor. Someone offers a compliment built on social hierarchy — she is gracious to those beneath her — and the reply simply asks who those people are supposed to be. The praise collapses into an insult without a single rude word being spoken, which is why the same three seconds of dialogue have been re-cast with a new victim roughly once a generation.

That reusability is also why the attribution drifts. A joke with no fixed target and no fixed speaker attaches itself to whoever the era considers its sharpest tongue: Samuel Johnson in the 18th century, Dorothy Parker in the 20th, and Mark Twain whenever the internet needs a name that guarantees a share.

The punchline survives every rewrite. Only the speaker’s name changes.

The Clare Boothe Luce problem

The version everyone repeats names Clare Boothe Luce as the target, and it comes from Margaret Case Harriman’s New Yorker profile of Luce published 4 January 1941, which sets the scene at a Hollywood dinner “last year.”

Quote Investigator points out the chronology does not work: the punchline had already been printed as Parker’s in June 1937. It also notes that Skolsky’s 1937 item described the target as a “prominent actress,” which does not fit Luce — whose fame rested on writing the 1936 Broadway hit The Women — but would fit the separate, genuinely well-known actress Claire Luce.

Explore

Filed under

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

Humility Character Kindness

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: the full citation historyquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive study of this exchange, with dated citations from 1770 through 1956 and the reasons the Clare Boothe Luce version is doubted.
Boswell, Life of Johnson, Volume 2gutenberg.org

The volume containing the 1770 funeral-sermon anecdote in which Johnson wonders who the lady’s inferiours were — the joke’s earliest known ancestor.
Wikiquote: Mark Twainen.wikiquote.org

Sourced Twain quotations. It carries his own inverted version, “Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any,” from Advice to Youth — and does not carry the inferiors exchange.
Wikiquote: Dorothy Parkeren.wikiquote.org

Parker’s sourced, attributed and misattributed quotations. Notably, this famous quip is not among them — a reminder of how thin its documentation is.
Mark Twain, “Advice to Youth” (1882) — full textspeakola.com

The complete talk, so you can read the one line of Twain’s that this joke is sometimes confused with.
Dorothy Parkeren.wikipedia.org

Biography of the woman the remark is credited to, including the Algonquin Round Table years that produced her reputation for exactly this kind of line.

The wit it belongs to

About Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker

1893–1967 · American poet, critic and screenwriter

Dorothy Parker made her name as a theatre critic for Vanity Fair and then as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, the New York circle whose remarks were recycled daily in newspaper columns. She wrote drama reviews and verse for The New Yorker from its founding in 1925, and later worked in Hollywood, earning Academy Award nominations for A Star Is Born (1937) and Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947). Her reputation for the perfect one-line demolition is exactly why lines like this one accumulate around her — and why a columnist’s single sentence became the whole provenance.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented instance

Sidney Skolsky, “Hollywood,” Milwaukee Sentinel, 23 June 1937, quote page 14 — the earliest instance located by Quote Investigator. The familiar Clare Boothe Luce version: Margaret Case Harriman, “Profiles: The Candor Kid — Part I,” The New Yorker, 4 January 1941, quote page 22.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘She is always kind to her inferiors. — But where does she find them?’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/she-is-always-kind-to-her-inferiors-but-where-does-she-find/

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