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Who really said it

If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain

Not Disraeli — nor Churchill, nor, so far as anyone can show, Burke Unknown — popularly credited to Benjamin Disraeli Earliest strong match: Anselme Batbie, 1872 · Batbie credited it to ‘Burke’
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

The oldest close version Quote Investigator has found is in a public letter of 3 December 1872 by the French politician Anselme Batbie, who introduced it as ‘Burke’s famous line’ — and QI has not located it anywhere in Edmund Burke’s writings. Disraeli enters in 1977, in Laurence J. Peter’s quotation collection, in a form using sixteen and sixty. Churchill arrives later still, by 1986. The ages move with every retelling, and no source in QI’s evidence uses 25 and 35 at all.

Last verified 5 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain” Not Disraeli and not Churchill. The earliest strong match is a letter of 3 December 1872 by Anselme Batbie, who credited it to "Burke" — a credit nobody has been able to verify. · Verbatim: “Anyone who is not a republican at twenty casts doubt on the generosity of his soul; but he who, after thirty years, perseveres, casts doubt on the soundness of his mind.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Benjamin Disraeli. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Earliest strong match
Letter of Anselme Batbie, 3 December 1872
Printed in
Histoire de la Révolution de 1870-71 by Jules Claretie, 1874
Batbie’s own credit
‘Burke’ — unverified; not found in Burke
Disraeli attribution
Peter’s Quotations, 1977, as ‘sixteen’ and ‘sixty’

Celui qui n’est pas républicain à vingt ans fait douter de la générosité de son âme; mais celui qui, après trente ans, persévère, fait douter de la rectitude de son esprit. Anselme Batbie, 3 December 1872

Quote Investigator’s English rendering: ‘Anyone who is not a republican at twenty casts doubt on the generosity of his soul; but he who, after thirty years, perseveres, casts doubt on the soundness of his mind.’ Note the ages — twenty and thirty — and that the political word is républicain, not liberal.

Quote Investigator on the heart-and-head saying

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator gives Batbie’s 1872 letter, reprinted in Jules Claretie’s 1874 Histoire de la Révolution de 1870-71, as the earliest strong match, and states plainly that it has not located the expression in Burke’s writings: quoteinvestigator.com ↗.
  • Two older precursors are documented, neither of which mentions the heart or the head: a remark attributed to John Adams in 1799 — ‘A boy of fifteen who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at twenty’ — printed in the 1829 Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from Jefferson’s papers: books.google.com ↗.
  • … and one attributed to François Guizot in Justin Dromel’s La Loi des Révolutions (1861), which uses twenty-five as the pivot but, again, says nothing about heart or head.
  • The Disraeli version enters through Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time in 1977 — ‘A man who is not a Liberal at sixteen has no heart; a man who is not a Conservative at sixty has no head’ — and was reproduced from that book by the Wall Street Journal in 1984. By 1986 the Hartford Courant had moved it to Churchill.

No rights status is asserted, because the English wording on this page has no identified source: Quote Investigator documents versions using twenty and thirty, twenty-five, sixteen and sixty, and twenty and forty, but none using 25 and 35. The documented antecedents — Batbie’s 1872 letter as printed in 1874, Dromel’s 1861 book, and the 1829 Jefferson volume — are all long in the public domain; the 1977 collection that first attached Disraeli’s name is not.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

Quote Investigator opens this one with eleven candidate names. That is usually a sign that the answer is none of them.

Benjamin Disraeli No contemporary source

Traced to Peter’s Quotations (1977), nearly a century after his death in 1881, and in a different form — sixteen and sixty: Quote Investigator ↗.

Winston Churchill No contemporary source

QI describes the saying as having ‘implausibly moved to the lips of Winston Churchill’ by 1986, in a Hartford Courant item using twenty and forty: Quote Investigator ↗.

Edmund Burke Credited in 1872, unverified

Batbie introduced the line as Burke’s in 1872, but QI has not found it in Burke and suggests it may be Burke’s changing politics, rather than his words, that inspired the saying: Quote Investigator ↗.

Anselme Batbie earliest documented user, not the author

The 1872 letter is the earliest strong match QI has located, but Batbie was quoting, not coining. He lived 1828–1887: Quote Investigator ↗.

The saying has no established author. Its oldest close form is French, from 1872, and its subject was republicanism rather than liberalism: Quote Investigator ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

The saying survives because it lets whoever repeats it flatter both halves of an argument while conceding nothing — the young get generosity, the old get sense. That symmetry is also why it is so easy to rewrite: only the two ages need changing to aim it at a different generation.

It has been through three political vocabularies. The 1872 French version is about républicains; English versions later said socialist, and only recently liberal. The words moved because the politics did.

Anyone who is not a republican at twenty casts doubt on the generosity of his soul…

Read the full story

The ages are the tell. Quote Investigator’s documented versions run twenty and thirty (1872), twenty-five (Guizot, via Dromel, 1861), fifteen and twenty (Adams, 1799), sixteen and sixty (Disraeli, 1977) and twenty and forty (Churchill, 1986). A saying whose numbers drift this freely is a proverb, not a quotation.

Quote Investigator credits Dr. Konstantin Dushenko for the Guizot and Batbie citations, Fred R. Shapiro's Yale Book of Quotations for the Adams precursor, and Barry Popik for earlier work on the saying.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigatorquoteinvestigator.com

The full investigation, from the 1799 Adams precursor through Batbie in 1872 to Disraeli in 1977 and Churchill in 1986.
Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1829)books.google.com

Google Books full view of the volume carrying the 1799 remark attributed to John Adams.
Wikiquote: Benjamin Disraelien.wikiquote.org

His sourced and misattributed quotations — neither section carries this saying.
Wikipedia: Benjamin Disraelien.wikipedia.org

Biography of the statesman the saying is most often pinned on.

Popularly credited author

Why it gets pinned on Disraeli

Benjamin Disraeli

1804–1881 · British Prime Minister, novelist and parliamentary wit

Benjamin Disraeli founded modern British Conservatism’s self-image, which makes him the natural owner of a line about growing out of radicalism — and he had himself begun in politics as a Radical before ending as a Tory Prime Minister, so the sentiment fits his life even though the words are not his. He is one of the two or three heaviest magnets in English political misquotation; his Wikiquote page carries a long misattributed section, and this saying is not in it either.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Batbie, Anselme. Letter of 3 December 1872, printed in Claretie, Jules. Histoire de la Révolution de 1870-71. Paris: Dépot Général de Vente a la Librairie Polo, 1874, p. 482. Earliest strong match located by Quote Investigator.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain’?” Last verified 5 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-you-are-not-a-liberal-at-25-you-have-no-heart-if-you-are/

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