their hearts and minds will follow

[Fred Shapiro]

On Tue, 3 Oct 2006, Dennis Baron wrote:

> Another quote question: was it Lyndon Johnson or Robert Macnamara, or
> someone else entirely, who said the line, "when you've got them by
> the balls, their hearts and minds will follow"? Is there even a locus
> classicus for the expression?

Nothing in Bartlett's or the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.  The
just-published and usually stunningly good Yale Book of Quotations
includes this saying but slips up on dating, giving as its earliest source
Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (1972), which book was actually not
published until 1983.  The earliest I find in ProQuest Historical
Newspapers is the following:

In the den of his Tudor-style home on two wooded acres in McLean, Va., he
[Chuck Colson] tacked up a plaque with a Green Beret slogan: "When you've
got 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."
        Los Angeles Times, 4 June 1974

Fred Shapiro


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org