Winston Churchill gets credit for saying “If you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative when you’re older, you have no brain”. I’m not sure that he actually said it.
Francois Guizot, in the previous century, wrote “Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.” I’m pretty sure I heard it first from Bob Brown, so I was about twenty then, and the term ‘republican’ didn’t have the same meaning in mid 19th Century France as it has in America today. Definitely not the same meaning in early 20th Century Ireland. Other comments by Guizot include:
“It is only after an unknown number of unrecorded labors, after a host of noble hearts have succumbed in discouragement, convinced that their cause is lost; it is only then that cause triumphs.” ~ Francois Guizot
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