The San Francisco Chronicle Quotes

Context

This line was written by Henry Ford in the San Francisco Chronicle on Apr. 13, 1928.

Henry Ford was one of America's greatest innovators, so he spent a lot of time thinking about thinking. He used variations of this quote a lot. (Shouldn't a great thinker shake up his quotes up a bit more?)

In 1884, Ford was cited by The Daily Morning Astorian as saying, "Thinking is the hardest thing that's done in the world, and the most commonly shirked, therefore." Maybe he thought "shirked" was too complicated a word for all the non-thinkers in the world, so he simplified it in 1889 where, in a story in The Evening World , Ford said, "Real thinking is the hardest work in the world, and that is the reason, probably, why there is so little of it done."

Ford continued refining and adapting the quote over the years, with the last and most well-known version appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1928: "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it." It's a witty quote, but we imagine if anyone stopped working his assembly line to get some thinking done, Ford wouldn't have been happy.

Where you've heard it

You know that grad school friend you have? Yeah, they've probably said it.

Pretentious Factor

If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.

This quote implies that you're a thinker and many others aren't. That's pretty much the definition of pretentious.