Who really said it

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time

Q: Did Abraham Lincoln say "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time"?

No. There is no Lincoln manuscript, letter, speech text, contemporaneous newspaper report or witness record containing it. The standard scholarly edition of his writings does not include it as his, and the reference work grading recollected Lincoln sayings puts these recollections near the bottom of its reliability scale. The earliest attributions we can date are from 1885 and 1886 — twenty years after he was killed — and they arrive through the temperance press, not through anyone who knew him.

Not documented as Lincoln — first credited to him in 1885–86 Unknown first credited to Lincoln 20 years after his death

Disputed Free to reuse

There is no Lincoln manuscript, letter, speech text, contemporaneous newspaper report or witness record containing it. The standard scholarly edition of his writings does not include it as his, and the reference work grading recollected Lincoln sayings puts these recollections near the bottom of its reliability scale. The earliest attributions we can date are from 1885 and 1886 — twenty years after he was killed — and they arrive through the temperance press, not through anyone who knew him.

Last verified 20 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time” In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything… he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. —Abraham Lincoln, Ottawa, 21 August 1858. The "fool all the people" line is not documented as his.

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

Can you use it?

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In context

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Provenance

What Lincoln actually said

Lincoln source: None — excluded from the Collected Works
Earliest attributions: 1885–86 (sources differ on which is first)
Route into circulation: The Prohibition movement, not Lincoln scholarship
Proverbial ancestor: Jacques Abbadie, 1684 (in French)

In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. Ottawa debate, 21 Aug 1858

Lincoln’s genuine, documented statement about persuading the public — from the first Lincoln–Douglas debate, in the very speech season the fake is traditionally assigned to. Recorded by stenographers at the time.

Quote Investigator — the 1684-to-1886 chronology

How we traced it

No contemporaneous source exists. Roy P. Basler’s Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) does not carry it as Lincoln’s, addressing it only in a footnote observing that tradition has attached it to an 1858 speech while recording no documentary evidence. The Fehrenbachers’ Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln grades the recollections near the bottom of their scale Lincoln Association ↗.
The earliest attributions to Lincoln are 1885–86: a letter printed in a New York prohibitionist paper in September 1885, and a Milwaukee newspaper in October 1886. Sources disagree on which is first, so we give the range rather than pick Quote Investigator ↗.
The thought is much older and not American. Jacques Abbadie wrote in 1684 that one may fool some men, or all men in some places and times, but not all men in all places and ages — repeated in the Encyclopédie in 1754, a century before Lincoln the ancestor ↗.

Public domain

Free to reuse. Every candidate source is pre-1929 — the 1684 French original, the 1885 and 1886 newspapers — and everything Lincoln genuinely wrote is public domain. There is no rights holder for the saying because there is no identified author. Quote it freely; just do not credit Lincoln, or Barnum. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

The attribution problem

This is among the most famous sentences in American political speech, and the case against Lincoln’s authorship is unusually strong — it rests on the people whose profession is knowing what he wrote.

Excluded from the Collected Works no documentary evidence

Basler’s standard edition does not include it as Lincoln’s, noting only that tradition assigns it to an 1858 speech. The reference work grading recollected Lincoln sayings rates these recollections near its lowest tier the assessment ↗.

Recollections from 1904–05 46 years later

The tradition that he said it at Clinton, Illinois rests on memories collected around 1904–05 from elderly witnesses solicited for the purpose — nearly half a century after the fact. Historians generally reject them.

Word order shifts constantly oral transmission

Which group is fooled when varies from printing to printing across the 1880s. A fixed text authored once does not behave that way; a proverb passed by mouth does.

Also unsupported misattribution of a misattribution

P. T. Barnum is the usual alternative credit. No nineteenth-century source substantiates him either — the Barnum claim appears late and was disputed as soon as it surfaced.

Not documented as Lincoln’s. First credited to him in 1885–86, two decades after his death, via the temperance press; the thought itself goes back to a French text of 1684 full chronology ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

The structure is what makes it survive: three clauses, each conceding something, ending in the one that does not. It is built to be remembered and repeated, which is also why it behaves like a proverb rather than a quotation — the middle terms swap around freely and nobody notices.

Lincoln’s documented thinking on the same subject is less consoling. He did not say the public cannot be fooled indefinitely; he said public sentiment decides everything, and that whoever shapes it outranks anyone who writes laws or hands down judgments.

The editors of his collected writings left it out. That is the finding.

The chronology

1684: Jacques Abbadie, in French — one may fool some men, or all men in some times, but not all men in all times.

1754: repeated in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie.

1865: Lincoln dies. No contemporaneous record of him saying it exists.

1885–86: first attributions to Lincoln, in a prohibitionist letter and a Milwaukee newspaper.

1887–89: widespread in speeches and advertising. 1904–05: recollections manufactured to place it in 1858.

Explore

Filed under

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

Truth Power

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.

You Can Fool All of the People Some of the Timequoteinvestigator.com

The chronology from Abbadie (1684) through the 1885 prohibitionist letter and the 1886 newspaper printing.

"You Can Fool All the People" — Lincoln Never Said Thatabrahamlincolnassociation.org

The Abraham Lincoln Association’s own treatment of the attribution and the evidence against it.

Abraham Lincoln — Wikiquote (disputed)en.wikiquote.org

Records the earliest printings, the failed 1905 recollection attempts, and the unsupported P. T. Barnum attribution.

First Lincoln–Douglas debate, Ottawa, 21 Aug 1858www.nps.gov

The genuine, stenographically recorded Lincoln passage on public sentiment.

Popularly credited author

Why it gets pinned on Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

1809–1865 · 16th President of the United States

Abraham Lincoln is the most quotable American, and a homely proverb about the limits of deception fits his voice so naturally that generations have assumed it must be his. The route it actually took is instructive: it entered public life through the Prohibition campaigns of the 1880s, where an aphorism about not fooling the public did useful work, and a Lincoln byline made it unanswerable.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Lincoln, Abraham. First Lincoln–Douglas debate, Ottawa, Illinois, 21 August 1858. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler.

MLA (9th ed.)

Lincoln, Abraham. First Lincoln–Douglas Debate. Ottawa, Illinois, 21 Aug. 1858. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.

APA (7th ed.)

Lincoln, A. (1858, August 21). First Lincoln–Douglas debate, Ottawa, Illinois. In Collected works of Abraham Lincoln.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘You can fool all the people some of the time’?” Last verified 20 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/you-can-fool-all-the-people-some-of-the-time