Thinking is the hardest work many people ever have to do, and they don’t like to do any more of it than they can help.

The wording appears in Robert R. Updegraff’s 1916 business/advertising parable “Obvious Adams” as part of a passage arguing that people avoid the effort of careful analysis and instead seek shortcuts. Updegraff attributes the line to “Professor Zueblin,” but the investigator notes no direct match has been located in Zueblin’s own writings, suggesting it may be paraphrase or faulty recollection. Similar sentiments circulated earlier and Henry Ford later used closely related formulations.

The quote claims that sustained, disciplined thinking is so demanding that many people minimize it, preferring easy answers or gimmicks over gathering facts and reasoning carefully.

I guess Professor Zueblin is right when he says that thinking is the hardest work many people ever have to do, and they don’t like to do any more of it than they can help.

Thinking is the hardest work any one can do—which is probably the reason why we have so few thinkers.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.