The line has no known author. The Times of London printed a version in 1927 already labelled an “old proverb,” and the earliest recorded appearance of the image is Germaine de Staël’s On Germany (1813). Carlin did print this modern wording — page 74 of Brain Droppings (1997) — but when he used it again in 2001 he credited it to “Anon.”
“Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music” an anonymous proverb, not George Carlin and not Friedrich Nietzsche. The Times (London) called it an old proverb in 1927; the earliest recorded appearance of the image is Germaine de Staël's On Germany (1813). Carlin printed the modern wording in Brain Droppings (New York: Hyperion, 1997), p. 74, and credited "Anon." in Napalm & Silly Putty (2001). Via Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to George Carlin. 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.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the themes of purpose, creativity and freedom. Theme: "Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music". 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 "Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music". 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 line actually shows up
Modern wording documented in
Brain Droppings
Publication
George Carlin; Hyperion, New York, 1997 — the line on page 74, credited to “Anon.” when reused in 2001
Earlier attestation
“They who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music” — The Times (London), 1927, printed as an old proverb
Earliest recorded appearance
Germaine de Staël, On Germany (1813), per Wikiquote
They who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music. The truth of the old proverb was never more surely borne out that [sic] it is just now.
The Times, 1927
This is the 1927 printing in The Times of London (16 February 1927) as transcribed by Quote Investigator — reproduced exactly, including the “borne out that it is” wording of the original, hence the [sic]. Seventy years before Brain Droppings, and already introduced as an old proverb rather than anyone’s coinage.
1927 — The Times of London prints “They who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music” and calls it an old proverb; a proverb dictionary picks up that instance in 1929 without finding anything earlier. Quote Investigator’s chronology ↗.
Meanwhile — the saying is handed to Friedrich Nietzsche across the web, an attribution Wikiquote lists as misattributed ↗ and that no researcher has been able to substantiate.
The sentence has no identifiable author — it was already being called an “old proverb” when The Times printed a version in 1927 — so quotle.info asserts no rights status for the saying itself and makes no public-domain claim. Note separately that the exact modern wording as it sits on page 74 of Brain Droppings (Hyperion, 1997) appears inside a book that is still in copyright, even though Carlin credited the line itself to “Anon.”
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
Three names, none of them the author
This is one of the most heavily re-signed sentences on the internet. Every credit it carries has been checked and none of them holds.
✕
The whole quotationFriedrich Nietzsche Misattributed
The modern wordingGeorge Carlin Reprinted, not written
GeorgeCarlin.net, the long-running unofficial Carlin catalogue, puts it on its bogus-quotes list: “George Carlin quoted this line, but he didn’t compose it” ↗. It is on page 74 of Brain Droppings (1997), and when it reappeared in Napalm & Silly Putty (2001) he credited “Anon.”
✕
A 2002 newspaper printing‘Angela Monet’ A poet no one can find
A widely copied variant — “Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music” — is credited to a poet of this name in a 2002 newspaper instance recorded by Quote Investigator ↗, which reports no evidence that such a poet exists.
This sentence is a near-perfect specimen of how attribution drifts. It began as an observation rather than an epigram: Germaine de Staël, describing a moment of dissociation, imagined watching a ballroom with the music switched off — “the dancing that we saw there would appear insane.” Over the nineteenth century the image hardened into a saying, and by 1927 The Times of London could print it and call it old without feeling any need to say whose it was.
What happened next is the modern part of the story. A saying with no owner is unstable: every generation hands it to whoever it sounds like. It got pinned on Friedrich Nietzsche, who loved dancing as a metaphor but whom no researcher has been able to connect to this sentence; on a poet called “Angela Monet,” who cannot be found; and on George Carlin, who actually printed it — and then, four years later, honestly labelled it “Anon.”
The proverb was already old in 1927. Everyone since has just been signing it.
Why “he printed it” is not “he wrote it”
Brain Droppings is a collection of jokes, notions, lists and stray lines, and the unofficial GeorgeCarlin.net catalogue suggests the most likely explanation is the ordinary kind: he encountered a good line somewhere, it lodged, and it came back out later without its source attached. The correction is his own — the 2001 credit to “Anon.” is Carlin declining the authorship the internet later insisted on giving him.
The Nietzsche version circulates in a longer, more literary shape — “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music” — which is not the wording Carlin printed and not a sentence traceable to Nietzsche’s books either.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1937–2008 · American comedian, social critic and author
George Carlin was an American stand-up comedian, satirist and author whose routines took apart politics, religion and above all the English language. He really did print this sentence — it sits on page 74 of his 1997 bestseller Brain Droppings, a grab-bag of jokes, lists and stray observations — but he was not claiming it: when the same line turned up in Napalm & Silly Putty (2001) it carried the credit “Anon.” Carlin is one of the internet’s most-forged names, and he said so himself in his 2001 essay “Don’t Blame Me,” posted on his own site georgecarlin.com: “Nothing you see on the Internet is mine unless it came from one of my albums, books, HBO shows, or appeared on my website.” The essay came down when that site was revamped in 2012, but the wording is preserved on the unofficial GeorgeCarlin.net ↗.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Anonymous proverb, attested 1927
Anonymous proverb. Earliest recorded appearance per Wikiquote: Germaine de Staël, On Germany (1813); labelled an “old proverb” in The Times (London), 1927, per Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Those Who Dance Are Considered Insane by Those Who Can’t Hear the Music” (5 June 2012). Modern wording printed in George Carlin, Brain Droppings (New York: Hyperion, 1997), 74, and credited by Carlin to “Anon.” in Napalm & Silly Putty (2001).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music’?” Last verified 3 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/those-who-dance-are-considered-insane-by-those-who-cannot/