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Who really said it

We Don't Know Who Discovered Water, But We Know It Wasn't a Fish

Not Albert Einstein — earliest credited to John M. Culkin, 1966 John M. Culkin 1928–1993 · American media scholar; a Jesuit priest until 1969
Disputed In copyright

Einstein did write a sentence built on the same image, but it is not this one. His three-paragraph essay Self-Portrait, dated 1936 and published in English in Out of My Later Years, asks: “What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?” The wording people actually quote is a different sentence with a different joke in it. Its earliest close match appears in April 1966, in Howard Gossage’s Ramparts article “Understanding Marshall McLuhan”, where it is credited not to McLuhan but to Father John Culkin of Fordham: “We don’t know who it was discovered water, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a fish.” McLuhan himself used the saying from November 1966 onward and each time credited it to “someone” or “a wit”. Quote Investigator ↗ notes that even Culkin’s authorship is not firmly established.

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

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“We Don't Know Who Discovered Water, But We Know It Wasn't a Fish” Not Albert Einstein, and not Marshall McLuhan, who credited "someone" every time he used it. The earliest close match is credited to Father John Culkin in Howard Gossage’s "Understanding Marshall McLuhan", Ramparts, April 1966: "We don’t know who it was discovered water, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a fish." Einstein’s own 1936 essay Self-Portrait asks a different question: "What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?"

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

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Ramparts (publisher of the April 1966 article quoted above)). 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 John M. Culkin — American media scholar and educator; a Jesuit priest until 1969. Theme: "We Don't Know Who Discovered Water, But We Know It Wasn't a Fish". 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 "We Don't Know Who Discovered Water, But We Know It Wasn't a Fish". 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 source

Earliest close match
Howard Gossage, “Understanding Marshall McLuhan”, Ramparts, April 1966, page 37
Credited there to
Father John Culkin of Fordham University
What Einstein actually wrote
“What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?” — Self-Portrait, essay dated 1936
McLuhan’s own practice
Used it from November 1966, always crediting “someone” or “a wit”

In the ordinary course of events, we are not aware of our environment any more than a fish is aware of his. As Father John Culkin of Fordham, a leading McLuhanite, says, “We don’t know who it was discovered water, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a fish.” Howard Gossage, Ramparts, April 1966

The earliest known instance of the saying in a form close to the popular wording. Note that Gossage, writing an article about McLuhan, credits Culkin rather than McLuhan — which is the opposite of how the line travels today.

Quote Investigator — the 1909 to 1976 chain

How we verified this

  • The idea is much older than any of the names attached to it. Every-Day Japan (1909) carries an introduction by Count Hayashi opening “It is said that fish do not see water, nor do Polar bears feel the cold”; the Harvard anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn wrote in Mirror for Man (1949) that “It would hardly be fish who discovered the existence of water” the antecedents ↗.
  • Einstein’s contribution is real but is a different sentence. In the essay Self-Portrait, dated 1936 and printed in English in Out of My Later Years, he writes: “What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?” The two sentences share an image, not a wording the 1936 essay ↗.
  • The earliest instance matching the popular wording is in Ramparts for April 1966, in Howard Gossage’s article about McLuhan — and Gossage credits Father John Culkin, not McLuhan the April 1966 citation ↗.
  • McLuhan used the saying at a symposium on 16 November 1966 and prefaced it “Someone said once”; in a March 1967 Toronto lecture he said “A wit has said”. The Medium is the Massage (1967) prints the line with an explicit ascription to John M. Culkin. The credit to McLuhan is something later readers supplied McLuhan’s own attributions ↗.
In copyright

Quote sparingly and attribute. The passage reproduced above comes from Howard Gossage’s article in Ramparts, April 1966 — well after the 1930 cut-off for the United States public domain — and remains in copyright, as does Einstein’s 1936 essay Self-Portrait and its English publication in Out of My Later Years. The 1909 antecedent in Every-Day Japan is old enough to be public domain in the United States, but it is a different sentence and not the line on this page. This is not legal advice.

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

The attribution problem

An unusually crowded case: three famous names, one modest one, and a proverb older than all of them.

Albert Einstein no source

Einstein never wrote this sentence. What he wrote, in the 1936 essay Self-Portrait, is “What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?” — the same image, put as a question, without the joke about who discovered water the 1936 text ↗.

Marshall McLuhan popularizer, not author

McLuhan used the line repeatedly from November 1966 and never claimed it. He introduced it as “Someone said once” and “A wit has said”, and The Medium is the Massage prints it credited to John M. Culkin McLuhan’s attributions ↗.

Father John Culkin first strong match

Howard Gossage’s April 1966 Ramparts piece quotes Culkin saying it, and two later books repeat the Culkin credit. Gossage himself, profiled in The Atlantic in 1974, treated the line’s primary authorship as hard to trace the Culkin citations ↗.

A proverb, not a quotation ancestor

“Fish do not see water” appears in 1909; Clyde Kluckhohn has “It would hardly be fish who discovered the existence of water” in 1949; Pierce Butler told a Senate subcommittee “It wasn’t fish who discovered water” in 1954; a 1960 psychology textbook gives “The fish will be the last to discover water” and credits it to “someone” the full sequence ↗.

Einstein wrote a different sentence in 1936; McLuhan credited “a wit”; the earliest close match is credited to John Culkin in April 1966 the evidence ↗.

Context

Why it keeps changing hands

The saying is a piece of folk epistemology — you cannot see the thing you are immersed in — and folk wisdom is exactly the kind of material that loses its author. Every person in this chain was reaching for a familiar idea rather than coining one, which is why almost all of them credited somebody else.

The pattern here is worth naming, because it is the commonest way a quotation acquires a famous owner: a well-known figure repeats a saying, carefully attributing it to someone else, and the audience remembers the famous voice and forgets the disclaimer. McLuhan said “a wit has said” and got the credit anyway.

McLuhan said a wit had said it. Posterity decided the wit was McLuhan.

Six decades of the same idea

1909: “It is said that fish do not see water, nor do Polar bears feel the cold” — Count Hayashi’s introduction to Every-Day Japan.

1936: Einstein’s essay Self-Portrait asks what a fish knows about the water it swims in. A different sentence, the same image.

1949: Clyde Kluckhohn, Mirror for Man — “It would hardly be fish who discovered the existence of water.”

1954: Pierce Butler, in testimony to a US Senate subcommittee — “It wasn’t fish who discovered water.”

1960: a psychology textbook prints “The fish will be the last to discover water” and credits “someone”.

April 1966: Ramparts credits Father John Culkin with the earliest close match to the modern wording.

November 1966 onward: McLuhan uses it in public repeatedly, crediting “someone” and “a wit”. The credit to McLuhan is added by everybody else.

Explore

Filed under

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

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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: We Don’t Know Who Discovered Water, But We Know It Wasn’t a Fishquoteinvestigator.com

The full chain from the 1909 “fish do not see water” antecedent through Einstein 1936, Kluckhohn 1949 and Culkin 1966 to McLuhan’s own hedged attributions.
John M. Culkinen.wikipedia.org

The Fordham media scholar and Jesuit the earliest close match is credited to; he brought McLuhan to Fordham in the mid-1960s.
Marshall McLuhanen.wikipedia.org

The theorist the line is usually pinned on — who credited it to someone else every time he used it.
Albert Einsteinen.wikipedia.org

Author of the 1936 essay Self-Portrait, which uses the same image in a different sentence.

The author

About John M. Culkin

John M. Culkin

1928–1993 · American media scholar and educator; a Jesuit priest until 1969

John M. Culkin Jr. met Marshall McLuhan at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and became his most effective American advocate: in 1964 he brought McLuhan to Fordham University for a year, and in 1969 he left the Jesuit priesthood to found the Center for Understanding Media, named after McLuhan’s book. He spent his career arguing that children should be taught to read film and television as seriously as print. He is the person named in the earliest close match to this saying — though the writer who named him, Howard Gossage, later found the line’s primary authorship genuinely hard to trace, so this is the best-documented credit rather than a settled one.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The earliest documented instance (Chicago)

Gossage, Howard. “Understanding Marshall McLuhan.” Ramparts 4, no. 12 (April 1966): 34, 37. Compare Einstein, Albert. “Self-Portrait” (essay dated 1936), in Out of My Later Years.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We Don’t Know Who Discovered Water, But We Know It Wasn’t a Fish’?” Last verified 1 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-dont-know-who-discovered-water-but-we-know-it-wasnt-a/

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