# ?H E double toothpicks?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/h-e-double-toothpicks/265397>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 22, 2004, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/h-e-double-toothpicks/265397 "2004-09-22T00:35:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![NadaHappyCamper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/278dde/32.png) [@NadaHappyCamper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NadaHappyCamper)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/h-e-double-toothpicks/265397/1 "2004-09-22T00:35:17Z")

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Today at work I thought of something that I recall as a quote,it goes as follows:If hell didn’t exist mankind would be obligated to create it.Can someone in the audiance tell me please who said that ,I realize the wording may differ from what I was thinking,but I am sure that someone else came up with that thought before I.  
NadaHappyCamper 😕

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**Author:** ![stockton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@stockton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stockton)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/h-e-double-toothpicks/265397/2 "2004-09-22T00:48:35Z")

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I can think of a couple of similar phrases offhand…

From the movie The Usual Suspects:

> **[Quotes from "The Usual Suspects"](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114814/quotes)**
>
> \[last lines\] Verbal: After that my guess is that you will never hear from him again. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist. And like that... he is gone.

“Verbal : Who is Keyser Soze? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”  
And from Voltaire:

“If God didn’t exist, it would be neccesary to invent him.”

Don’t need to post a cite for that, you can find a bazillion for yourself on google using a search string like “voltaire god exist”. Have a blast.

I suspect it’s the second quote you’re thinking of (it’s very famous), and you might be misremembering or combining two different quotes.

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**Author:** ![stockton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@stockton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stockton)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/h-e-double-toothpicks/265397/3 "2004-09-22T00:49:53Z")

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…and I DO know how to spell necessary. Grrr…

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**Author:** ![cichlidiot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f9b8f/32.png) [@cichlidiot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cichlidiot)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2004, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/h-e-double-toothpicks/265397/4 "2004-09-22T01:00:50Z")

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> [@stockton](#):
>
> I suspect it’s the second quote you’re thinking of (it’s very famous), and you might be misremembering or combining two different quotes.

That’s what I think, too. I first became familiar with this idea reading _The Brothers Karamazov_, but in it, Dostoevsky quotes Voltaire:

> [@](#):
>
> You know, dear boy, there was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who declared that, if there were no God, he would have to be invented. S’il n’existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l’inventer. And man has actually invented God. And what’s strange, what would be marvellous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.