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Who really said it

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity

Not Dorothy Parker — actually Ellen Parr Ellen Parr Dates unknown — no biographical details have been located
Disputed as to Parker, who is excluded on dates. Ellen Parr holds the earliest credit, but almost nothing is known about her. In copyright

The earliest known appearance is Reader’s Digest for December 1980, in the “Quotable Quotes” column, where the words are credited to Ellen Parr. Dorothy Parker had been dead for thirteen years. Quote Investigator’s conclusion is that the saying “should be credited to Ellen Parr” — while noting that it has been unable to find any biographical details about her at all.

Last verified 16 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity” — Ellen Parr

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

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Ellen Parr or her estate; first published in Reader’s Digest, December 1980). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Ellen Parr — credited in Reader's Digest, December 1980. Theme: "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity". 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 "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity". 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 documented appearance

Earliest known appearance
Reader’s Digest, “Quotable Quotes”
Date
December 1980
Credited there to
Ellen Parr
Dorothy Parker
Died 7 June 1967 — thirteen years earlier

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. —Ellen Parr

As printed in the December 1980 “Quotable Quotes” column and reproduced by Quote Investigator ↗. We were not able to consult a copy of the issue itself.

Quote Investigator’s chronology, 1915–2004

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ gives the earliest instance as Reader’s Digest, December 1980, in a column called “Quotable Quotes,” where the words are ascribed to Ellen Parr. A Centre Daily Times item of March 1981 and a 1984 Alaskan newspaper cryptogram both still credit Parr.
  • Dorothy Parker died on 7 June 1967 ↗, thirteen years before that first printing. QI states there is “no substantive evidence that she employed this saying.”
  • QI identifies a specific mechanism for the swap: a March 1996 mailing-list digest listed quotations alphabetically by surname, placing a Parker item (“The two most beautiful words in the English language are: ‘Cheque enclosed.’”) immediately above the Parr item. QI hypothesises ↗ that an inattentive reader merged the two. The first reassignment to Parker that QI records is an April 1997 Usenet post.
  • The Parker guess felt plausible because curiosity really is one of her subjects: her 1926 collection Enough Rope contains the poem “Inventory,” whose second couplet reads “Four be the things I’d been better without: / Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.” We confirmed that text in the full Project Gutenberg edition ↗. Sounding like an author is not evidence of authorship.
In copyright

First published in December 1980 — far too recent for the United States public domain, which currently reaches published works through 1930. Rights would rest with Ellen Parr or her estate, and possibly with the magazine; because no biographical trace of Parr has been found, the holder cannot be identified with confidence. Parker’s own 1926 Enough Rope, quoted above for contrast, is 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

A staple of graduation speeches and social media, almost always over Dorothy Parker’s name. The dates rule her out.

Dorothy Parker Ruled out by dates

Parker died in June 1967; the saying is not documented anywhere until December 1980. QI ↗ finds “no substantive evidence that she employed this saying,” and dates the first Parker credit it can locate to an April 1997 Usenet post.

An alphabetical list Mechanism

In a March 1996 mailing-list digest of quotations sorted by surname, a Parker line sat directly above the Parr line. QI hypothesises ↗ that a careless scan of those two adjacent entries produced the misattribution — “Parr” and “Parker” being alphabetically almost identical.

The second sentence Context

“There is no cure for curiosity” had been circulating on its own for decades: QI ↗ prints an instance from the Boston Sunday Post in 1915, which continues “It must be outgrown or endured.”

The credit belongs to Ellen Parr, about whom even Quote Investigator ↗ has been unable to learn anything — a reminder that the real author of a famous line is often nobody famous at all.

Context

Why it mattered

This is the clearest documented case of a misattribution with a known mechanism. Most fake quotes simply drift; this one can be traced to a specific bad habit — reading a list sorted by surname and picking up the wrong neighbour. “Parr” and “Parker” sit within two letters of each other, and in the 1996 digest QI reproduces, the two entries are one line apart.

The cost is borne by Ellen Parr, whose only known trace in the historical record is this sentence, and who has now largely lost it to a more famous name.

One line apart in an alphabetical list, and the credit moved for good.

Explore

Filed under

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

Knowledge Growth

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 Investigatorquoteinvestigator.com

The full chronology from 1915 to 2004, the Ellen Parr conclusion, and the adjacent-entries explanation.
Enough Rope (1926), full textgutenberg.org

Parker’s public-domain collection, containing “Inventory” — the curiosity couplet that makes the misattribution feel plausible.
Enough Rope, first edition scanarchive.org

A scanned 1926 printing of the same collection.
Dorothy Parker on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Her life dates and the standing warning about misquotation. This particular line is not among those it lists.
Reader’s Digesten.wikipedia.org

Background on the magazine whose “Quotable Quotes” column carries the earliest known printing.

The author

About Ellen Parr

Ellen Parr

Dates unknown · credited in Reader’s Digest, December 1980

Almost nothing is known about Ellen Parr. Quote Investigator, which traced this saying through eight decades of print, states plainly that it “has not located any biographical details for Parr.” She survives in the record as a name at the end of one sentence in a December 1980 magazine column — and as the person that sentence was subsequently taken from.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The earliest documented source (Chicago)

Parr, Ellen. Quoted in “Quotable Quotes,” Reader’s Digest, December 1980. Earliest documented appearance per Quote Investigator; no earlier printing has been located.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity’?” Last verified 16 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-cure-for-boredom-is-curiosity-there-is-no-cure-for/

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