Posted on 09/04/2002 4:45:15 PM PDT by Mr. Mulliner
Can anyone identify who the originator of this quote is? If so, please try and provide some evidence. Thanks!
There's a quote that almost everyone who pays attention to politics knows. It goes something like this:
If you aren't a liberal by age 20, you have no heart. If you are still a liberal by age 30, you have no brain.
I have most often heard that quote attributed to Winston Churchill. But I have reason to believe that it was NOT a Churchill quote. For one thing, Michael Medved, whose attention to such details I greatly respect, credited someone else (a German, I think, but now I can't remember who). Furthermore, I've dug through a couple of quote search websites and read through pages of Churchill quotes without coming across this one.
I'll be back in 2 hours to post it if someone doesn't before...
"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University makes this comment: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! and would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?
For what it's worth...
"If you are a liberal by age 20, you have no heart. If you are still a liberal by age 30, you have no brain.
Therefore my source for the quote will be different than yours ;-)
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Speech given at the Lord Mayor's Luncheon, Mansion House, London, November 10, 1942.
Which is perhaps appropriate as we reach the Sept. 11 anniversary and prepare for the next step in the war.
I wish I could remember who Michael Medved said it was that first said this. If you know him, you know he's known as the guy with the "encyclopedic mind."
If you aren't a liberal by age 20, you have no heart.
If you are still a liberal by age 30, you have no brain.
Why not?
The earliest known version of this observation is attributed to mid-nineteenth century historian and statesman François Guizot:Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart;Variations on this theme were later attributed to Disraeli, Shaw, Churchill, and Bertrand Russell. (I misquoted Churchill to this effect for years.)
to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.
No, no, no, it was George Carlin! LOL!
You're weren't alone. Click on the link above and see who else has been credited with this quote.
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