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Who really said it

When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?

Not Churchill — a paraphrase credited to John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes 1883–1946 · English economist
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Winston Churchill is not the source. The earliest Churchill credit Quote Investigator ↗ can find is a 1999 item in the Florida Times-Union — and the wording there ends “What do you do, madam?”, not “sir”. The line belongs to Keynes lore instead, and even there no primary source exists: QI’s first strong match is Paul Samuelson on Meet the Press in 1970 saying “When events change, I change my mind. What do you do?”, and Samuelson credited Keynes only in 1978.

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?” Not Winston Churchill. "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" is usually credited to John Maynard Keynes, but no primary source has ever been produced for either man. Quote Investigator's first strong match is Paul Samuelson on Meet the Press, 20 December 1970 — "When events change, I change my mind. What do you do?" — and Samuelson credited Keynes only in 1978. The earliest Churchill credit QI records is a Florida Times-Union item of 18 September 1999, and it says "madam," not "sir." Keynes's biographer Lord Robert Skidelsky told the investment writer William Bernstein in 2003 that this line and "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" were both apocryphal.

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

Can you use it?

We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

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In context

Evoking the world of John Maynard Keynes — English economist, called the father of macroeconomics. Theme: "When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?". 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 "When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?". 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 paper trail, and where it stops

Credited to
Winston Churchill — no documented instance
Usually credited to
John Maynard Keynes — Wikiquote files it under “Attributed”
First strong match
Paul A. Samuelson on Meet the Press, 20 December 1970
Earliest Churchill credit
Florida Times-Union, 18 September 1999

Winston Churchill once said to a woman berating him for changing his position, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, madam?” Florida Times-Union, 18 September 1999

This is the earliest Churchill version Quote Investigator can locate — a newspaper anecdote, decades into the line’s life, with no source of its own. Note that it says “madam,” not “sir”: the “sir” ending comes from the Keynes branch of the story, where Samuelson’s 1983 version reads “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”

Quote Investigator: the full chronology, 1924 to 1999

How the line travelled

  • 1924 — the near-miss. Keynes writes in The Nation and Athenaeum about the investor who “refuses to change his opinion merely because facts and circumstances have changed”. Same thought, none of the famous wording. Quote Investigator ↗
  • 1970 — the first strong match. Paul Samuelson, on Meet the Press, defends revising his inflation estimates: “When events change, I change my mind. What do you do?” No attribution offered. He credits Keynes in the Wall Street Journal in 1978, and by 1983 is quoting it in The Economist as “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” Quote Investigator ↗
  • 1999 — Churchill enters. The Florida Times-Union gives the line to Churchill, addressed to a woman: “What do you do, madam?” QI calls this connection tenuous, on both the lateness of the date and Churchill’s standing as a quotation magnet. Quote Investigator ↗
  • 2011 — the search comes up empty. Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig offers a cash bounty for an irrefutable primary source, betting he will never have to pay it out; economist Donald Moggridge of the University of Toronto answers him, “The simple answer…is there is no evidence.” Jason Zweig ↗

No work by Churchill or by Keynes has ever been shown to contain this sentence, so there is no first publication whose date could fix a copyright status — we assert none. Its nearest documented ancestor is a 1970 broadcast remark by Paul Samuelson, and Churchill’s own line on consistency, quoted on this page, comes from an essay collected in Thoughts and Adventures (1932); neither is treated here as public domain.

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

A double misattribution

Two names get this line, and neither can be shown to have said it. Churchill is the newer and weaker claim; Keynes is the older and more plausible one, but “more plausible” is not the same as sourced.

Winston Churchill Not him

The earliest Churchill credit Quote Investigator ↗ found is a 1999 Florida Times-Union item: “Winston Churchill once said to a woman berating him for changing his position, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, madam?’” QI’s verdict is that the connection is “tenuous because the attribution occurred at such a late date and because Churchill’s name attracts spurious ascriptions.”

John Maynard Keynes Unproven

Wikiquote ↗ lists it only under “Attributed”, and files the popular form as a paraphrase of the version Paul Samuelson reported in The Economist in 1983: “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” Separately, Keynes’s biographer Lord Robert Skidelsky told the investment writer William Bernstein by e-mail in 2003 that this line and “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” were “both apocryphal” Jason Zweig ↗.

Paul A. Samuelson First strong match

QI’s earliest strong match is Samuelson on Meet the Press on 20 December 1970, defending having revised his inflation estimates between textbook editions: “When events change, I change my mind. What do you do?” He gave no attribution then; he credited Keynes in the Wall Street Journal in 1978. Quote Investigator ↗

Mitt Romney, 2011 A famous repeat

Romney credited a version of the line to Churchill on the campaign trail, and the International Churchill Society ↗ replied that he had confused Churchill with Keynes — while allowing that the sentiment was one Churchill genuinely held.

No primary source has ever been produced for this sentence — not from Churchill, not from Keynes. The earliest strong match Quote Investigator ↗ documents is Paul Samuelson in 1970, and even Samuelson only attached Keynes’s name to it eight years afterwards.

Context

Why it sticks to Churchill

Churchill is the internet’s highest-gravity quotation magnet: a line that sounds like a witty man demolishing a heckler drifts toward him whether or not he was in the room. This one had an extra pull, because Churchill really did spend a fifty-year career being accused of inconsistency — he crossed the floor of the Commons twice — and he really did have an answer ready. It just wasn’t this one.

The irony, as the International Churchill Society pointed out when Mitt Romney credited a version of the line to Churchill in 2011, is that Churchill’s genuine sentence on the subject is better than the one people borrow for him. It appears in his essay “Consistency in Politics,” collected in Thoughts and Adventures, and you can read it in full at the Internet Archive ↗.

The only way a man can remain consistent amid changing circumstances is to change with them while preserving the same dominating purpose.

What Churchill actually wrote about changing your mind

In “Consistency in Politics,” Churchill argues that a statesman’s arguments in two different situations may look “contradictory in spirit and opposite in direction” while his object stays the same: “We cannot call this inconsistency. In fact it may be claimed to be the truest consistency.” Then comes the pull-quote above.

The International Churchill Society dates the article to 1927, in Nash’s Pall Mall, and notes it was reprinted in Thoughts and Adventures. That is the Churchill line on this subject — documented, in his own book, and nothing like the sentence the internet hands him.

Explore

Filed under

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

Truth Change Doubt Humility

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 Investigator: the full chronologyquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: Keynes’s 1924 near-miss, Samuelson’s 1970 first strong match, the 1978 Keynes credit, and the 1999 Churchill attribution QI calls tenuous.
Wikiquote: John Maynard Keynesen.wikiquote.org

Files the line under “Attributed”, citing Samuelson’s 1983 Economist version and noting the famous form is a paraphrase of it.
Jason Zweig: “Keynes: He Didn’t Say Half of What He Said”jasonzweig.com

The Wall Street Journal columnist’s hunt for a primary source, including Donald Moggridge’s reply: “there is no evidence.”
International Churchill Society on the Romney misquotewinstonchurchill.org

The Churchill authorities’ own verdict: the line is Keynes’s, not Churchill’s — and here is what Churchill did write about consistency.
Churchill, “Consistency in Politics” (full text)archive.org

The essay containing Churchill’s real sentence on changing with circumstances while preserving the same dominating purpose.
Wikiquote: Winston Churchillen.wikiquote.org

Churchill’s sourced, disputed and misattributed quotations — this line is not listed anywhere on the page.

The man the line is usually pinned on

So whose line is it?

John Maynard Keynes

1883–1946 · English economist, called the father of macroeconomics

John Maynard Keynes was the English economist whose The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) reshaped how governments think about slumps, spending and unemployment. He was a famous changer-of-position — on the gold standard, on public works, on his own forecasts — which is exactly why a snappy defence of changing your mind attached itself to his name so easily. But no letter, article, broadcast or book of his has ever been produced containing this sentence, and his biographer Lord Robert Skidelsky told the investment writer William Bernstein in 2003 that this line and “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” were both apocryphal.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

How to cite this page

Garson O’Toole, “Quote Origin: When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?” Quote Investigator, 22 July 2011. QI’s first strong match: Paul A. Samuelson on Meet the Press, NBC, 20 December 1970 (transcript in Daily Labor Report, 21 December 1970). Earliest Churchill credit QI records: Florida Times-Union, 18 September 1999.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/when-the-facts-change-i-change-my-mind-what-do-you-do-sir/

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