nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the american people
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.85 in modern English
110
Scrabble Score
68
Letters
15
Syllables
22
Unique Chars
Meaning
proverb
Americans, as a group, are not especially intelligent and can be readily entertained or fooled to produce a financial benefit for someone.
Example Sentences
- "Ed Wood was a backwards genius, he set out to make horror movies and he didn’t know how to do it. . . . Mencken said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” Well, Ed Wood did go broke by underestimating their intelligence."
- "H. L. Mencken may have noted that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, but not even he could have anticipated this. Like Bill and Ted, their principal rivals among screen duos who play dumb, Wayne and Garth do their best to elevate stupidity to an art form."
- "It's noteworthy, by the way, that a pleasure dome like Palm Beach should also be the home of a drama troupe that not only specializes in shows like "Copenhagen" and "The Chairs" but performs them with flair. We have it on the best of authority that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, but Palm Beach Dramaworks seems to be doing quite well for itself by operating on the opposite assumption."
- "Most advertising seems to be aimed at an extremely unintelligent audience, and yet seems effective in persuading most of us. But the software industry may, I suspect, provide a few exceptions to the old saying that “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”"
Etymology
Widely attributed to American author and social critic H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) but not found verbatim in his published works, so the source and original form of this expression are not known with certainty. Likely a nearly verbatim paraphrase of: "No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people" which is attributed to Mencken. One possible origin of the reference specifically to Americans is the essay by Nora Ephron originally titled, If You're a Little Mouseburger, Come With Me. I was a Mouseburger And I Will Help You. (1970) In the essay, Ephron refers to "the old Mencken dictum that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." The piece was reprinted in Ephron's collection Wallflower at the Orgy. (1970)