Supposed to be a Churchill quote, but incorrect in its sourcing.
Misattributed
- 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.
- According to research by Mark T. Shirey, citing Nice Guys Finish Seventh: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations by Ralph Keyes, 1992, this quote was first uttered by mid-nineteenth century historian and statesman François Guizot when he observed, Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. This quote has been attributed variously to George Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Disraeli, Otto von Bismarck, and others.
- Furthermore, the Churchill Centre, on its Falsely Attributed Quotations page, states "there is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this." Paul Addison of Edinburgh University is quoted as stating: "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?"
- Variants: Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.
Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.
If you are not a socialist by the time you are 25, you have no heart. If you are still a socialist by the time you are 35, you have no head
In my personal experience, the better you are at Jeopardy, the more conservative you are. Age is almost irrelevant. Obviously a lot of otherwise intelligent people are young and naive, and will eventually grow out of it as they age and learn that fair is a state of mind, and others will just always be dullards, regardless of age, but it usually goes back to parenting, or the lack thereof, in the case of libs.