“But I do like this language -- wheat and chaff -- with its widening pool of foreign genes, and since I never have had any occasion to say “comestible,” it was pleasurable to think it.”

— Grace Paley

"The Story Hearer"

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Grace Paley 31

American writer and activist 1922–2007

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“An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.”

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Quoted in The Fine Art of Political Wit by Leon Harris (1964)
Quoted in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0231071949 by Robert Andrews (1993)
"Newspaper editors are people who separate the wheat from the chaff and then print the chaff." https://books.google.com/books?id=w8_p1eGVj8gC&pg=PA568&lpg=PA568&dq=adlai+chaff#v=onepage&q=adlai%20chaff&f=false (variation)
"Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and print the chaff." https://books.google.com/books?id=OTi0DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA701&lpg=PA701&dq=print+the+chaff&hl=en&sa=X#v=onepage&q=%22print%20the%20chaff%22&f=false (variation)
"Journalists separate the wheat from the chaff... and then print the chaff." https://books.google.com/books?id=5pXjFMzIUO8C&pg=PA263&lpg=PA263&dq=adlai+chaff&hl=en&sa=X#v=onepage&q=adlai%20chaff&f=false (variation) 
This statement has also been attributed https://books.google.com/books?id=d6JZryGvfxYC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=adlai+chaff#v=onepage&q=adlai%20chaff&f=false to an earlier usage by Elbert Hubbard.

“[chaff] Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.”

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The Philistine http://books.google.com/books?id=MaVHAAAAYAAJ&q=%22editor+a+person+employed+on+a+newspaper%22+%22whose+business+it+is+to+separate+the+wheat+from+the+chaff+and+to+see+that+the+chaff+is+printed%22&pg=PA810#v=onepage (May 1913)
The Roycroft Dictionary Concocted by Ali Baba and the Bunch on Rainy Days http://books.google.com/books?id=ZQLpQ2SAIeQC&q=%22Editor+1+a+person+employed+on+a+newspaper+whose+business+it+is+to+separate+the+wheat+from+the+chaff+and+to+see+that+the+chaff+is+printed%22&pg=PA46#v=onepage (1914).
Famous Lines: A Columbia Dictionary of Familiar Quotations https://books.google.com/books?id=MtciwlIG3sMC&pg=PA138&lpg=PA138&dq=adlai+chaff+elbert#v=onepage&q=adlai%20chaff%20elbert&f=false (1997), see Adlai Stevenson for a later variation

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