Posted on 10/28/2009 6:25:08 PM PDT by Michael.SF.
"If you are not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart and if you are not conservative at thirty, you have no brain."
If I gave up easily it would. But here is a question:
If Chirchill is the original source of that quote, which is a very famous quote, why do so many of the "Churchill quotes" sites not list it?
I would put it at about 50-50.
I guess I never had a heart.
In my post I put the age at 30, in my link to a version of the quote, the age is given as 40. That was what I referred to when I said I stood corrected. It is a minor point.
Thanks
Excellent, thank you.
I believe you are right, he was the originator and various people over the years have used it, or a variation of it. Churchill's being the one seen most often. Now I will search under Guisot's name and find other variations.
truer words were never spoken..at the young of 18, I was volunteering for...dare I say it..Carter..YIKES!!!!..then 4 years later I found Rush and was proudly pulling the lever for the Great One..Ronald Reagan.
In the above link it is also stated that variations on this quotation were later attributed to Disraeli, Shaw, Churchill, and Bertrand Russell.
Yes, Clémenceau...
Otto Von Bismark, I believe.
No, it wasn’t Tocqueville... Not his style...
Georges Clémenceau is the accepted source for “socialist”. I am not sure Guizot is the first thought.
Clemenceau once said that war is too important to be left to the generals.
Clemenceau
I knew, even being young when LBJs "Great Society" was created that there are two things that can never change; Fundamental economics, and human nature.
Now, virtually every morning when I wake up and turn on the local news and hear about the latest gang banger shooting or some horrendous child neglect story, I am not surprised. It could have easily been predicted 40 years ago. It is LBJs "Great Society" + 3 generations that we are living with.
If you pay people money for being dysfunctional, you will create more dysfunctional people which means you pay even more money to create even more dysfunctionality.
Be it "Bread and Circuses" in ancient Rome, or the Department of Human Services in 21st Century America --- nothing changes. Economic incentives are the same and people are the same as they were 2000 years ago.
My experience has been that far more people go from being 'liberal' to being conservative then the other way around, myself amongst them.
You’re welcome!
Well, the joke in France is like that:
“Why are generals so stupid? because they are chosen among the colonels...”
I believe the quote (or some variation of it) was originally coined by Wendell Willkie who was running as the Republican candidate for President against FDR in the 1940 U.S. election. Your quote was as follows: “If you are not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart and if you are not conservative at thirty, you have no brain.” I can dig up the reference to the Willkie quote. But I recall also hearing some time back the quote came from someone other than Willkie, and then reading Willkie as having said it for the first time during the 1940 election in an historical biography of FDR. Recently, I also heard people say the quote was from Churchill (including just a few hours ago in a law school class from my professor). But that’s wrong, the quote definitely came from Wendell Willkie. I’m not sure where the Churchill attribution comes from. And if Churchill had said something like that he certainly would have referred to being a “socialist” since he is from the U.K. and not being a “liberal” which is the U.S. term (although Churchill’s mother was from the U.S.). It may be that only Democrats and liberals would be sufficiently familiar with the source for the quote since it’s most closely associated with the election of FDR — but then again, liberals might not be too anxious to bring the quote up considering its sentiment. Where the attribution to Churchill came from, I just don’t know. But certainly Churchill is an easier historical figure to remember and refer to for any quote rather than trying to recall the name of Wendell Willkie who is now largely unknown and forgotten. I hope that helps.
Check out the link provided in post 26 for what seems to be the most complete explanation of the origin of the quote and it’s many variations.
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