Except David Hannum said that...
I didn't know that.. I just read that after I did a quick research. Thanks Eric!!!
"There's a sucker born every minute" is a phrase often credited to P.T. Barnum (1810 1891), an American showman. It is generally taken to mean that there are (and always will be) a lot of gullible people in the world.
However, when Barnum's biographer tried to track down when Barnum had uttered this phrase, all of Barnum's friends and acquaintances told him it was out of character. Barnum's credo was more along the lines of "there's a customer born every minute" he wanted to find ways to draw new customers in all the time because competition was fierce and people bored easily.
While some sources claim the quote is most likely from famous con-man Joseph ("Paper Collar Joe") Bessimer,[1] it was actually uttered by David Hannum, spoken in reference to Barnum's part in the Cardiff Giant Hoax. Hannum, who was exhibiting the original giant and had sued Barnum unsuccessfully for exhibiting a copy and claiming it was the original, was referring to the crowds continuing to pay to see Barnum's exhibit even after both it and the original had been proven to be fakes.
In turn, it was erroneously attributed to Barnum's fellow circus owner and arch-rival Adam Forepaugh attributed the quote to Barnum in a newspaper interview in an attempt to discredit him. However, Barnum never denied making the quote. It is said that he thanked Forepaugh for the free publicity he had given him.
Yet another source credits late 1860s Chicago "bounty broker, saloon and gambling-house keeper, eminent politician, and dispenser of cheating privileges..." Michael Cassius McDonald as the originator of the aphorism. According to the book Gem of the Prairie: Chicago Underworld (1940) by Herbert Asbury, when McDonald was equipping his gambling house known as The Store (at Clark and Monroe Streets in Chicago) his partner Harry Lawrence expressed concern over the large number of roulette wheels and faro tables being installed and their ability to get enough players to play the games. McDonald then allegedly said, "Don't worry about that, there's a sucker born every minute."
The earliest known appearance of the phrase in print is in Opie Read's 1898 novel A Yankee from the West.[2]
In the John Dos Passos novel The 42nd Parallel, the quotation is attributed to Mark Twain.
