Unquote
by Mark T. Shirey
Unquote 1
My version of gardening is to maintain a web page of quotations.
I had fun trying to ascertain who actually said what I quoted in
the June '00 Penn Central newsletter as:
If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart.
If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.
- Winston Churchill
I failed to find the quote under "socialist", "conservative",
"heart", "man", or "Churchill", in books of quotations like
Bartlett's, Encarta's, Oxford Dictionary of, Home Book of, or
NY Public Library's.
http://retro.co.za/quotes/eli.html says:
Any man who is not... a socialist before he is 40 has no heart.
Any man who is still a socialist after he is 40 has no head.
- Wendell L. Willkie (quoted by Richard Norton Smith)
http://www.sirius.com/~maya/poetry/republico.html says:
As George Bernard Shaw said,
one who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart,
and one who remains a socialist at 40 has no head.
http://home.planetinternet.be/~smitsr/quotes/b.html says:
The man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart,
but if he is still a socialist at 40 he has no head.
- Aristide Briand (1862 - 1932)
[French premier and former socialist]
http://bserver.com/bunker/party.html says:
I think it was William Casey [director of the CIA] who said,
A man who isn't a socialist at 20 has no heart,
and a man who is a socialist at 40 has no head.
http://abedul.pntic.mec.es/colaborativos/quotes/list.html says:
Anyone who is not a socialist at 16 has no heart,
but anyone who still is at 32 has no mind.
- Woodrow Wilson
http://jerryk.com/dialogue/dialogue960915.htm says:
He who is not a Socialist at 19, has no heart.
He who is still a Socialist at 30, has no brain.
- Otto Von Bismarck (1815-1896)
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/Content/1998/12/68/edits/seaton.html says:
Georges Clemenceau [another French Premier and former socialist]
once said something like:
A 20-year-old who is not a Socialist has no heart,
but a 30-year-old who is still a Socialist has no brains.
http://www.bkkpost.samart.co.th/news/BParchive/BP970911/1109_busi22.html says:
Not to be a Republican at 20 is proof of want of heart;
to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.
- François Guisot (1787-1874)
and:
A man who is not a liberal at 16 has no heart;
a man who is not a conservative at 60 has no head.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
and:
Not to be a socialist at 20 is proof of want of heart;
to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.
- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)
and:
Any man who is under 30 and is not a Liberal has no heart; and
any man who is over 30 and not a Conservative has no brains.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
A definitive answer arose in the wonderful book
"Nice Guys Finish Seventh: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings,
and Familiar Misquotations" by Ralph Keyes, 1992. He writes:
"An orphan quote [unattributed quote in search of a home] sometimes
attributed to Georges Clemenceau is:
Any man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart.
Any man who is still a socialist at age 40 has no head.
The most likely reason is that Bennet Cerf once reported Clemenceau's
response to a visitor's alarm about his son being a communist:
If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him.
If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.
George Seldes later quoted Lloyd George as having said:
A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart;
an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.
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;
to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.
Variations on this theme were later attributed to Disraeli, Shaw,
Churchill, and Bertrand Russell. (I misquoted Churchill to this
effect for years.)"