Did John F. Kennedy say "When everybody thinks alike, nobody will think at all"?

Q: Did John F. Kennedy say "When everybody thinks alike, nobody will think at all"?

No. The exact line — "When everybody thinks alike, nobody will think at all" — appeared as an unsigned filler item in the Philadelphia periodical The Westminster in 1905, with no author named, according to Quote Investigator. Kennedy was credited only in 1964 — after his death — and with a different variant, so the popular attribution is unsupported.

Who really said it

When everybody thinks alike, nobody will think at all

Not John F. Kennedy — an anonymous saying from 1905 Anonymous Exact wording first recorded 1905 · author unknown

Disputed Free to reuse

The exact line — “When everybody thinks alike, nobody will think at all” — appeared as an unsigned filler item in the Philadelphia periodical The Westminster in 1905, with no author named, according to Quote Investigator. Kennedy was credited only in 1964 — after his death — and with a different variant, so the popular attribution is unsupported.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“When everybody thinks alike, nobody will think at all” anonymous saying, first recorded 1905 (not John F. Kennedy).

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to John F. Kennedy. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Earliest record: “When everybody thinks alike, nobody will think at all”
First seen: 1905, The Westminster (Philadelphia) — unsigned filler
Related line: Walter Lippmann, “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much” (1915)
JFK link: Credited to Kennedy only in 1964, in a newspaper letter — posthumously

When everybody thinks alike, nobody will think at all.

The wording most people quote. A closely related idea — “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much” — was published by journalist Walter Lippmann in 1915, but even that is a variant, not the exact line.

Quote Investigator: the full chronology of this saying

How we verified this

The earliest exact match is an anonymous filler item in The Westminster (1905), per Quote Investigator.
Walter Lippmann published the related “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much” in The Stakes of Diplomacy (1915, p. 51).
The John F. Kennedy credit appears only in a 1964 Dallas Morning News reader letter — after Kennedy’s death — and quotes a different variant, “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking at all,” per QI.
The same idea has drifted onto Benjamin Franklin and George S. Patton (both from a single 1979 book of recollections), which QI rates a “weak” attribution.

Public domain

The exact wording first appeared anonymously in The Westminster in 1905; an anonymous work published in the United States before 1931 is in the public domain. Walter Lippmann’s related 1915 line from The Stakes of Diplomacy is likewise pre-1931 and public domain.

Fact-check

Why John F. Kennedy gets the credit

Kennedy is one of the internet’s default attributions for punchy, freedom-flavored aphorisms. This one predates his career by decades and was only ever pinned on him after he died.

John F. Kennedy Misattributed

No Kennedy speech, book, or letter contains this line. The only Kennedy credit documented by Quote Investigator is a 1964 Dallas Morning News reader letter — published after his November 1963 death — and it quotes a different variant.

Walter Lippmann Related, not identical

Lippmann genuinely wrote “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much” in The Stakes of Diplomacy (1915), but that is a distinct wording published a decade after the anonymous 1905 line.

Benjamin Franklin & George S. Patton Weak

Both trace to Porter B. Williamson’s 1979 book of Patton recollections, not to any primary source; QI calls the Patton link “weak.”

The exact line is an anonymous 1905 saying — not Kennedy, not Lippmann, not Franklin or Patton.

Context

Why it mattered

The thought is old and communal. As early as 1865, Dr. Henry Gibbons told a California alumni gathering that “it is the unthinking people…who think alike,” and by 1905 the crisp modern form was circulating anonymously in magazine fillers.

Because the sentiment flatters independent thinking, it has been re-credited across the twentieth century to whoever the quoter admired — Lippmann, Kennedy, Franklin, Patton. Each new famous name displaces the honest answer, which is that no single author can be shown to have coined it.

A saying this old and this anonymous belongs to no one — least of all a president credited only after his death.

Explore

Filed under

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

Doubt Wisdom

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: full origin tracequoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative chronology from 1865 through the modern misattributions to Kennedy, Franklin, and Patton.

Walter Lippmann (Wikiquote)en.wikiquote.org

Sources Lippmann’s genuine 1915 variant to The Stakes of Diplomacy, ch. IV, p. 51.

The Stakes of Diplomacy (1915), full textarchive.org

Scanned first edition of Lippmann’s book containing the related line.

The Stakes of Diplomacy (Library of Congress)loc.gov

Catalog record confirming the 1915 publication date and authorship.

The author

About John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

1917–1963 · 35th President of the United States

John Fitzgerald Kennedy served as the 35th U.S. President from 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. A Pulitzer Prize–winning author (Profiles in Courage) and celebrated orator, he is one of the internet’s most common magnets for inspirational quotes he never uttered. There is no record of Kennedy originating this saying, which predates his public life by decades.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

“When everybody thinks alike, nobody will think at all.” Earliest documented as an anonymous filler item in The Westminster (Philadelphia, 1905), per Quote Investigator (5 Nov. 2022). Cf. Walter Lippmann, The Stakes of Diplomacy (New York: Henry Holt, 1915), ch. IV, p. 51.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘When everybody thinks alike, nobody will think at all’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/when-everybody-thinks-alike-nobody-will-think-at-all