“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” -- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) Sept. 19, 1926 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune.
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” -- paraphrase of above
“There’s a sucker / fool born every minute / day.” -- old saying attributed to Artemus Ward, Phineas Taylor Barnham, Mike McDonald, and others.