Who seddit?

As an avid reader of the Freakonomics blog I often glean over the posts of Fred Shapiro. He is the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations and often blegs readers for the relevant language of the 21st century.

I have always had an interest in quotes because they offer, theoretically, profound knowledge boiled down to simple language. In the grapevine of their growth quotes can get as maligned as the message in a childhood game of telephone. Even if the structure of a quote is held intact it can be attributed to someone who never uttered it, or to someone who is not the originator of the quote's essence.

Shapiro is the Sherlock Holmes of quotations and has begun taking on charges from readers. On Thursday he put a shock to my world as I learned that one of my favorite Winston Churchill quotes can actually be traced to earlier origins. For the sake of style I will repeat it in my preferred form and then provide Shapiro's insight.

"Any young man who is a conservative is without a heart, any old man who is a liberal is without a brain."

One of the pleasures of compiling The Yale Book of Quotations was tracing and cross-referencing different versions and precursors of famous quotes. This one is usually credited to Georges Clemenceau, but W. Gurney Benham’s Book of Quotations cites French premier and historian Francois Guizot (1787 to 1874), translating his statement as “Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.” Benham asserts that “Clemenceau adopted this saying, substituting socialiste for republicain.”

But I was delighted to find that John Adams had expressed a similar idea well before Guizot entered adulthood. Thomas Jefferson preserved this quip, writing in a 1799 journal that Adams had said: “A boy of 15 who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at 20.”