Did Mark Twain Say “It’s Easier to Fool People Than to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled”?

The short answer

Quote Investigator found no substantive evidence that Twain wrote or said it. The earliest close match it located is a tweet of 10 January 2011, which already gave Twain's name.

What Twain did write

The thought is not alien to him. In a passage of his autobiography dictated on 2 December 1906 and published in the North American Review, Twain wrote: “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!” It is a related observation, but a different sentence, and it comes in a story from his own youth: years later he confessed a deception to his mother, and she would not believe the confession.

An older thought

The idea that people cling to a mistaken belief is much older. Quote Investigator points to Baltasar Gracián, in 1647, writing that the more mistaken a blockhead's judgement, the more stubbornly he holds it. The one-line version credited to Twain has not been found before 2011.

Did Mark Twain say “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled”?

No source shows that he did. The earliest close match Quote Investigator found is a tweet from 2011.

Did Twain write anything like it?

Yes: “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!”, in his autobiography, dictated in December 1906.