Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Attributed to Kissinger in Robert Byrne, The Other 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1984), no. 480; Byrne gives no original source. An earlier version, “It's 90% of the politicians who give the other 10% a bad name,” appeared without a named author in Changing Times: The Kiplinger Magazine (October 1957), p. 2 (scan). The Journal-News (Spencerville, Ohio), 3 October 1957, p. 9, credited Changing Times for the joke. These printings do not establish who originated it.