These Are My Principles. If You Don’t Like Them I Have Others

Groucho Marx? American Legislator? Anonymous?

Dear Quotation Investigator: My favorite quip attributed to Groucho Marx is perfect for describing some politicians:

These are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.

Was Groucho impersonating a politician when he said this?

Quote Investigator: It is not clear whether Groucho did employ this joke.  But your belief that it is associated with politicians does have strong evidentiary support. In fact, the joke has a long history, and a version was being told before Groucho was born. The connection with politicians goes back more then one hundred years.

The marvelous compendium, the Yale Book of Quotations, has examined the quote and found an attribution to Groucho in 1983 in Legal Times.^[1] 2006, The Yale Book of Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro, Section Julius Henry ‘Groucho’ Marx, Quote Page 498, Yale University Press, New Haven. (Verified with hardcopy) This is a suspiciously late date since Groucho died in 1977.

QI found the following version of the quip in a New Zealand newspaper in 1873. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:^[2] 1873 October 18, New Zealand Tablet, Weekly Epitome, Page 7, Column 2, Volume I, Issue 25, New Zealand. (Google News Archive, National Library of NZ, Papers Past) link

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!”

The joke appeared again in New Zealand in 1878:^[3] 1878 August 18, The Grey River Argus, Published Daily, Page 2, Column 2, Volume 21, Issue 3123, New Zealand. (Google News Archive, National Library of NZ, Papers Past) link

The American candidate had a very good estimate of the best way to command popular support when, after having described such manufactured principles as he had got ready, said – “Them feller citizens are my principles, but if they don’t suit yer exactly, they ken be altered.”

In 1899 the joke was told in Canada about a “great American stump orator”:^[4] 1899 February 17, Daily Mail And Empire, Great Meeting at Goderich, Page 2, Column 4, Toronto, Canada. (Google News Archive) link

These, gentlemen, are my principles, but if you do not like them I can change them.

In 1975 a Canadian politician named Darcy McKeough was criticized for employing the joke as a humorous excuse for possible future changes in policy. The wording used was similar to that in the version attributed to Groucho:^[5] 1975 April 14, The (Ottawa) Citizen, Temporary Budget by Harold Greer, Page 6, Ottawa, Canada. (Google News Archive) link

“You’ve all heard,” he (Darcy McKeough) told the locked-up press, “of the politician who wound up his speech saying: ‘ladies and gentlemen, those are my principles, and if you don’t like them I have some others.’ If events I can’t foresee alter the basis of this budget and undermine its effectiveness, I’ll have no hesitation about coming back to it later in the fiscal year.”

It is possible that Groucho or one of his writers heard the joke and then Groucho used it in a radio show, TV show, or other performance. He also may have used it in an interview or a letter, but the earliest citation establishing a connection that is currently known to QI is the one in the Yale Book of Quotations.