This is a joke about politicians that was already old when Groucho was young. Quote Investigator’s earliest match ↗ is an 1873 New Zealand newspaper item that credits it to an unnamed American legislator — “Them’s my principles; but if you don’t like them — I kin change them!” — seventeen years before Groucho was born. QI then tracks it through 1878, 1891 and 1910, always as a stock gag about a candidate with adjustable convictions. Meanwhile the Yale Book of Quotations can find no Groucho attribution earlier than 1983, six years after he died. He may well have used it; there is no evidence he wrote it.
“Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others” Not Groucho Marx. Documented as an anonymous joke about an American legislator by 1873; first attributed to Groucho in 1983. Via quotle.info · Verbatim: “Them’s my principles; but if you don’t like them — I kin change them!”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Groucho Marx. 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.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the themes of character, power and truth. Theme: "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The joke, seventeen years before Groucho
Popular credit
Groucho Marx — no primary source has ever been produced
Earliest documented match
New Zealand Tablet, 18 October 1873, per Quote Investigator
Credited there to
an anonymous American legislator
Earliest Groucho attribution
1983, per the Yale Book of Quotations — Groucho died in 1977
He brought in the Provincial Loan Bill, declaring that, if the House did not accept it, he was prepared to adhere to his original proposal. It was something like the American legislator — “Them’s my principles; but if you don’t like them — I kin change them!”
Quoted by Quote Investigator
The 1873 wording as quoted by Quote Investigator ↗ from the New Zealand Tablet of 18 October 1873. QI’s own link is to the National Library of New Zealand’s Papers Past archive, which we could not reach from this network; the transcription above is QI’s, and is presented as QI’s rather than as our own reading of the scan.
Quote Investigator ↗ is the anchor here, and its finding is blunt: “It is not clear whether Groucho did employ this joke… the joke has a long history, and a version was being told before Groucho was born.” Its earliest match is dated 18 October 1873.
QI then lays out the chain: 1878 in The Grey River Argus (“Them feller citizens are my principles, but if they don’t suit yer exactly, they ken be altered”), 1891 in the Liverpool Daily Post, and 1910 in The Birkenhead News — every one of them told about an American candidate, none of them about a comedian.
On the Groucho side, QI reports that the Yale Book of Quotations found an attribution to him in Legal Times in 1983, and comments that this “is a very late date since Groucho died in 1977; hence, the support for the attribution is weak.”
For what it is worth, Wikiquote’s Groucho Marx page ↗ does not list this line anywhere — not among his sourced quotes, and not even in its lengthy Misattributed section. The line is popular enough to be on a thousand mugs and absent from his own quotation page.
No copyright status is asserted for this wording, because no author and no first publication have ever been established for it. The oldest printing anyone has produced — the 1873 New Zealand Tablet item — is far too old to be in copyright, but it is not this sentence: it reads “Them’s my principles; but if you don’t like them — I kin change them!” The polished modern wording is an anonymous later variant that cannot be tied to any particular publication.
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
The line is one of the internet’s most reliable Groucho quotations, and one of the least supported. Here is what can actually be documented.
✕
Credited as the authorGroucho Marx No primary source
No film, book, letter, broadcast or interview has ever been produced in which Groucho says this. Per Quote Investigator ↗, the Yale Book of Quotations dates the earliest Groucho attribution to 1983 — six years after his death — and QI calls that support “weak”.
~
The earliest match anyone has producedAn anonymous American legislator, 1873 Early user
QI’s earliest citation ↗ is the New Zealand Tablet of 18 October 1873, which tells the gag about an unnamed American legislator. That is seventeen years before Groucho Marx was born, and the man himself is unidentified — so this is the earliest use on record, not a rival author.
~
How the modern wording travelsA Canadian politician, 1975 wording drift
QI records the Canadian politician Darcy McKeough deploying it in 1975 in a form very close to the version now pinned on Groucho: “ladies and gentlemen, those are my principles, and if you don’t like them I have some others.” The joke kept its politician even as it acquired a comedian.
✓Nobody knows who first made this joke. What is documented is that it was a stock gag about American politicians by 1873 ↗, and that Groucho’s name only became attached to it in 1983.
Context
Why it mattered
The joke survives because it is a perfect miniature of a real thing: the politician whose convictions are inventory. That is why it kept its setting for a century — every documented version from 1873 to 1975 is told about a candidate or a legislator, never about a comedian.
What happened to it is what happens to a lot of ownerless jokes. A funny orphan line drifts toward the funniest available name, and for a twentieth-century one-liner that name is very often Groucho Marx. The attribution says less about Groucho than about the gravitational pull of a famous wit.
Every documented version, 1873 to 1975, is told about a politician.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
You’re skipping our source pages — these links now open the source directly. Show them again
The author
About Unknown (an anonymous American legislator)
??
Unknown (an anonymous American legislator)
In print by 1873 · a stock joke about American politicians
Nobody has ever identified who first made this joke. The oldest version anyone has found — in a New Zealand newspaper of 18 October 1873 — attributes it only to “the American legislator”, an unnamed figure who is plainly already a stock character. It travelled for a hundred years as a gag about politicians before it was attached to a comedian.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The primary source (Chicago)
Earliest documented in the New Zealand Tablet, 18 October 1873, credited to an anonymous American legislator; as documented by Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: These Are My Principles. If You Don’t Like Them I Have Others” (9 May 2010; revised 26 October 2024).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others’?” Last verified 11 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/those-are-my-principles-and-if-you-dont-like-them-well-i/