There’s a sucker born every minute
The Andy Warhol Diaries“There’s a sucker born every minute” is a saying Andy Warhol recalls while surveying the booming auction business. In his account, it neatly names the buyer an auction house may eventually find for an object it keeps putting up for sale—but Warhol’s added wish that he had thought of the line gives the expression a second subject: the memorable phrase itself, as something worth claiming.
Meaning and Use
Warhol applies the saying to what he sees as a routine of reselling: auction houses put unsold objects out again, he says, until a sucker comes along. The expression reduces that process to a blunt verdict on the eventual purchaser’s gullibility. Its force in this passage comes from the contrast between the glamour and commercial momentum of auctions and the repetitive tactic Warhol describes behind them.
The Sotheby’s Diary Entry
On November 19, 1980, Warhol walked up Madison Avenue and visited Sotheby’s while trying to secure the auction house’s advertising for Interview; he already had two large ads from Christie’s. The auction business was booming, and he left with so many catalogues that he could not carry them all. After criticizing the houses for putting unsold things out again, he recognized the aptness of the saying and immediately regretted not having thought of it himself. That turn makes the entry more than a complaint about auction sales: the phrase becomes another desirable commodity, prized for its compactness and potential to be repeated.
