Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

The earliest located appearance (1897) is in Elbert Hubbard’s periodical "The Philistine", where the line is presented as a quotation and explicitly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Later quotation collections and newspapers repeat the attribution to Emerson, but no primary-text location in Emerson’s writings is identified.

The remark suggests that widespread public admiration is not reliable evidence of merit; instead, it can indicate that audiences are easily persuaded or manipulated into elevating someone to celebrity status.

“Fame is proof that the people are gullible,” said Emerson. And so a vast fortune is usually proof that the owner has discovered a weakness of humanity and bet on it.

Fame is proof that people are gullible.