We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles
Not Edison's words — a later paraphraseThomas Edison1847–1931 · American inventor & electric-light entrepreneur
?Attribution status: The idea is genuinely Edison's; the famous sentence is not his documented wording.✓Reuse status: Free to reuse
Edison really did make this point — but not in these words. The earliest documented version, printed in the New York Herald on 4 January 1880, has him saying that once the electric light came into general use, “none but the extravagant will burn tallow candles.” Quote Investigator ↗ concludes that the 1880 Herald wording “is probably the most accurate and can be properly ascribed to Edison,” and that the evidence for the later versions is weaker. The familiar “so cheap that only the rich will burn candles” phrasing is a tightened restatement that QI does not document until 2004.
“We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles” — a later paraphrase of Thomas Edison, not his documented words. What the New York Herald actually reported on 4 January 1880: "After the electric light goes into general use, none but the extravagant will burn tallow candles." Quote Investigator's earliest citation for the "only the rich will burn candles" phrasing is 2004 (as "electric light," credited to Samuel Insull); the exact "electricity" sentence first appears in QI's record in 2008.
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Provenance
The earliest documented version
Earliest source
New York Herald
Date
4 January 1880
Setting
Edison's laboratory, Menlo Park, New Jersey — Edison overheard answering a question about cost
Popular wording
The “only the rich” phrasing is not documented until 2004 — as “electric light,” and credited to Samuel Insull, not Edison; this exact “electricity” sentence not until 2008
After the electric light goes into general use, none but the extravagant will burn tallow candles.
Reported speech, not a text Edison wrote
Quote Investigator reports that a journalist visiting Menlo Park overheard Edison make this remark while answering an inquirer's question about cost. The Herald's report was reprinted in other papers within days — the Chester Daily Times on 8 January 1880 and the Daily City Item of New Orleans on 12 January 1880, the latter in the variant form “only the extravagant and wasteful will burn tallow candles.”
9 April 1914 — A Red River Power Co. advertisement in the Grand Forks Herald runs the line as Edison's direct words — “Thos. A. Edison Said:” — but in a new form: “We will make Electric Light so cheap that only the wealthy can afford to burn candles” ↗. The same copy repeats in a Commonwealth Edison advertisement in the Chicago Tribune on 24 June 1914. Utility advertising, not Edison, supplies the upgrade.
4 November 2004 — The exact modern wording — “only the rich will burn candles” — makes its earliest appearance in QI's record, in USA Today drawing on Harold Evans's They Made America. It credits Samuel Insull, not Edison ↗.
The documented text shown here — the New York Herald's report of 4 January 1880 — was published in the United States long before 1931 and is in the public domain, as is the 1914 Commonwealth Edison advertisement carrying the intermediate wording. The popular modern sentence is a different matter: it has no identified author or first publication, so no one can be named as holding rights in it, and its public-domain status is asserted here only for the dated 1880 and 1914 texts, not for the paraphrase.
Fact-check
Three things go wrong with this quote
This is not a fabrication pinned on a famous name — it is something subtler and more common: a real remark that got better every time it was retold, until the polished version outran its own evidence.
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The wordingThomas Edison paraphrase
Edison's documented 1880 remark is “After the electric light goes into general use, none but the extravagant will burn tallow candles.” Quote Investigator ↗ ascribes that version to him and says the evidence for the later versions is weaker. An intermediate form appeared in 1914 Commonwealth Edison advertising, which presented it as his direct words — “Thos. A. Edison Said:” — in the form “only the wealthy can afford to burn candles.”
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The speakerSamuel Insull rival claim
When QI's earliest citation of the exact modern wording surfaced — a 2004 USA Today article drawing on Harold Evans's They Made America — it credited the line not to Edison but to Samuel Insull ↗, Edison's former assistant turned electricity magnate. QI records the claim but offers no evidence supporting it, so this is a competing attribution rather than a solution.
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The dateA reporter, 31 December 1879 false precision
The modern wording is widely dated to the first public demonstration of the incandescent light, citing a 2011 reference work via Wikiquote ↗. The demonstration was real, but the citation is a modern secondary source; the Rutgers Edison Papers essay ↗ on those demonstrations records no such remark.
In the winter of 1879–80 Edison was selling more than a lamp — he was selling the idea that electric light would be ordinary. Gas and candles were the incumbents, and the decisive question was never whether the filament glowed but whether it glowed cheaply. The remark the Herald caught was Edison's answer to exactly that question: a visiting Herald journalist overheard Edison answering someone's question about cost, and Edison replied by predicting that candles would survive only as an indulgence.
That is why the line has proved so durable, and so easy to improve. Every retelling has sharpened the same rhetorical move — invert the status of the old technology, make the luxury good into the obsolete one. “Extravagant” became “wealthy” in 1914 advertising copy, and “wealthy” became “rich” by the time the line reached the twenty-first century. The prediction, incidentally, came true in a way Edison did not intend: candles never became a poor man's fuel, they became a rich man's ambiance.
Edison predicted candles would become a luxury. He was right — just not in the words everyone quotes.
How a paraphrase acquires a date
The modern wording is often served with impressive precision: spoken to a reporter during the first public demonstration of the incandescent light on 31 December 1879. The date is real — Edison did open Menlo Park to the public over New Year's Eve 1879, and special trains carried sightseers to see the lamps.
But the precision is borrowed, not earned. The Wikiquote entry ↗ that supplies the date sources it to a 2011 reference book, not to an 1879 document. The Rutgers Edison Papers essay ↗ on those same demonstrations quotes the Herald's coverage of those demonstrations and contains no candle remark at all. A real event has been fitted with a sentence that no contemporary account of it records.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1847–1931 · American inventor & electric-light entrepreneur
Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) was an American inventor whose Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory produced a practical incandescent lighting system in 1879. He was also a formidable promoter: he opened his laboratory to the press and the public over the New Year holiday of 1879–80, and the resulting newspaper coverage did as much for the electric light as the filament did. The candle line belongs to that publicity campaign — Edison's actual recorded boast was cheaper than tallow, and the sharper modern version grew out of it over the following century.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented source
New York Herald, January 4, 1880, reporting Edison's remark at Menlo Park; earliest documented form of the saying, as traced in "Quote Origin: We Will Make Electricity So Cheap That Only the Rich Will Burn Candles," Quote Investigator, April 10, 2012.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles’?” Last verified 14 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-will-make-electricity-so-cheap-that-only-the-rich-will