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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (8844)3/19/2004 8:22:57 PM
From: Win SmithRespond to of 81568
 
Churchill was certainly a great man, but I don't quite see how misattributing a quote constitutes a compliment. When I last brought this up, another poster came up with a plausible derivation, along with another conservative misattribution. I'm sure you'll consider Krauthammer good company, though.

Charles Krauthammer [op-ed, May 25] quotes Winston Churchill as saying, "If you're not a liberal when you're 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative when you're 40, you have no head."

This quotation is frequently but mistakenly attributed to Churchill. It is anyway unlikely that Churchill would subscribe to this philosophy: He was a swashbuckling soldier at 20, and a Conservative member of Parliament at 25. A couple of years later he switched to the Liberal Party (which was not liberal in the modern sense), and later went back to the Conservatives.

The phrase originated with Francois Guisot (1787-1874): "Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head." It was revived by French Premier Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929): "Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head."

-- Peter Rutland
( washingtonpost.com via siliconinvestor.com )