nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people proverb: americans, as a group, are not especially intelligent and can be readily entertained or fooled to produce a financial benefit for someone.
Proverb
nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
- Americans, as a group, are not especially intelligent and can be readily entertained or fooled to produce a financial benefit for someone.
- 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.1988 April 23, “1988 OBIE Interview: Robert Anton Wilson”, in RAWilsonFans.org, retrieved 13 Sep 2015
- 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.1992 Feb. 14, Janet Maslin, "Film: A Dim Duo In a Revel Of Stupidity" (review of Wayne's World), New York Times (retrieved 13 Sep 2015)
Forms of nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
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Origin of nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
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)
Questions about nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
- What does nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people mean?
- Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people means americans, as a group, are not especially intelligent and can be readily entertained or fooled to produce a financial benefit for someone.
- What part of speech is nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people?
- Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people is a proverb.
Words near nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people in the dictionary
- nobody
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- nobody ever went broke underestimating the good taste of the American people
- nobody ever went broke underestimating the good taste of the American public
- nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
- nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public
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- nobody'd
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Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nobody_ever_went_broke_underestimating_the_intelligence_of_the_american_people. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.