Winston Churchill

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can) (1874-11-30 – 1965-01-24) was a British politician & statesman, best known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II. He was Prime Minister of the UK from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.

Quotes

Early career years (1898 - 1928)


My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930)

The 1930s

The Second World War (1939 - 1945)

Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
During my talk with Winston he burst out with: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

Post-war years (1945 - 1955)

We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.
The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war or servitude must be guarded by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than submit to tyranny.
In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.
How many wars have been averted by patience and persisting good will! ... How many wars have been precipitated by firebrands! How many misunderstandings which led to wars could have been removed by temporizing!

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956-58)

A History of the English Speaking Peoples, in four volumes, much of which had been written in the 1930s. ISBN 0-88029-423-X

Posthumous publications


Disputed

  • Power will go to the hands of , rogues and freebooters. All Indian leaders will be of low calibre and men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles.
    • Often cited as from a speech "on the eve of Indian Independence in 1947", e.g. "Anything multiplied by zero is zero indeed!" in Rediff India Abroad (11 April 2007), or even from a speech in the house of Commons, but it does not appear to have any credible source. May have first appeared in the Annual Report of P. N. Oak's discredited "Institute for Rewriting Indian History" in 1979, and is now quoted in at least three books, as well as countless media and websites.
  • America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these 'isms' wouldn't today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government — and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives.
    • Published as having been made in an (August 1936) interview with William Griffin, editor of the New York Enquirer, who was indicted for sedition by F.D.R.'s Attorney General Francis Biddle in 1942. In a sworn statement before Congress in 1939 Griffin affirmed Churchill had said this; Congressional Record (1939-10-21), vol. 84, p. 686. In 1942, Churchill admitted having had the 1936 interview but disavowed having made the statement (The New York Times, 1942-10-22, p. 13).
    • In his article "The Hidden Tyranny," Benjamin Freedman attributed this quotation to an article in the isolationist publication Scribner's Commentator in 1936. However, that magazine did not exist until 1939. He may have gotten the date wrong or might have been referring to one of its predecessors, Scribner's Monthly or Payson Publishing's The Commentator.
The earliest known version makes no mention of Churchill, and appeared in the Strand Magazine, later quoted in the "Pepper and Salt" section of the Wall Street Journal on 1942-09-30:
When a memorandum passed round a certain Government department, one young pedant scribbled a postscript drawing attention to the fact that the sentence ended with a preposition, which caused the original writer to circulate another memorandum complaining that the anonymous postscript was "offensive impertinence, up with which I will not put."
The earliest known attribution of this to Churchill appears to be in Plain Words (1948) by Sir Ernest Gowers, who writes:
It is said that Mr. Winston Churchill once made this marginal comment against a sentence that clumsily avoided a prepositional ending: "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put".
A far more elaborate version also appeared in the Wall Street Journal on the December 9 that same year:
The carping critic who can criticize the inartistic angle of the firemen's hose while they are attempting to put out the fire, has his counterpart in a nameless individual in the British Foreign Office who once found fault with a projected speech by Winston Churchill. It was in the most tragic days of World War II, when the life of Britain, nay, of all Europe, hung in the balance. Churchill prepared a highly important speech to deliver in Parliament, and, as a matter of custom, submitted an advanced draft to the Foreign Office for comment. Back came the speech with no word save a notation that one of the sentences ended with a preposition, and an indication where the error should be eliminated. To this suggestion, the Prime Minister replied with the following note: "This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."
Over the years many variants that seem to have been based on informal anecdotes have arisen including:
"This is the type of pedantry up with which I will not put."
"This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put."
  • The substance of the eminent Socialist gentleman’s speech is that making a profit is a sin, but it is my belief that the real sin is taking a loss.
    • Reported in James C. Humes, Speaker's Treasury of Anecdotes About the Famous (1978), p. 45, as a remark made in the House of Commons responding to a Laborite speech on the evils of free enterprise; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).


Misattributed

  • If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
    • According to research by Mark T. Shirey, citing Nice Guys Finish Seventh: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations by Ralph Keyes, 1992, this quote was first uttered by mid-nineteenth century French historian and statesman François Guizot when he observed, Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. (N'être pas républicain à vingt ans est preuve d'un manque de cœur ; l'être après trente ans est preuve d'un manque de tête.) This quote has been attributed variously to George Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Disraeli, Otto von Bismarck, and others.
    • Furthermore, the Churchill Centre, on its Falsely Attributed Quotations page, states "there is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this." Paul Addison of Edinburgh University is quoted as stating: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?"
    • Variants: Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.
      Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.
      If you are not a socialist by the time you are 25, you have no heart. If you are still a socialist by the time you are 35, you have no head
  • There is nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.
    • According to The quote verifier: who said what, where, and when (2006), Keyes, Macmillan, p. 91 ISBN 0312340044 , the cover of a trade magazine once credited this observation to Churchill, but it dates back well into the nineteenth century, and has been variously attributed to Henry Ward Beecher, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Lord Palmerston, among others.
  • An empty taxi arrived and out of it stepped Attlee.
    • A joke about Clement Attlee doing the rounds after World War II, often wrongly attributed to Churchill. When he heard about that misattribution he said:
      • Mr Attlee is an honourable and gallant gentleman, and a faithful colleague who served his country well at the time of her greatest need. I should be obliged if you would make it clear whenever an occasion arises that I would never make such a remark about him, and that I strongly disapprove of anybody who does.
  • All this contains much that is obviously true, and much that is relevant; unfortunately, what is obviously true is not relevant, and what is relevant is not obviously true.
    • This is not by Churchill, but a paraphrase of Churchill quoting Arthur James Balfour in Great Contemporaries (1937): 'there were some things that were true, and some things that were trite; but what was true was trite, and what was not trite was not true'
  • You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give.
    • Variant: We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
    • Extensive research of writings by and about Churchill at the Churchill Centre fails to indicate that Churchill ever spoke or wrote those words.
  • The further backward you look, the further forward you can see.
    • In Churchill by Himself (2008), Appendix I: Red Herrings, ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 577 ISBN 1586486381; “Commonly ascribed to WSC, even by The Queen (Christmas Message, 1999). What Churchill actually said was ‘The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward’.”
  • Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
    • According to Churchill's assistant, Anthony Montague-Browne, Churchill had not coined this phrase, but wished he had.
  • The hardest cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine.
    • This remark referring to Charles de Gaulle was actually made by General Louis Spears, Churchill's envoy to France.
    • Film producer Alexander Korda asked Churchill in 1948 if he had made the remark, he replied
      • No, I didn't say it; but I'm sorry I didn't, because it was quite witty ... and so true!
        • Quoted in Nigel Rees, Sayings of the Century page 105.
  • Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.
    • This military aphorism has been attributed to both von Moltke and Clausewitz, as well as Churchill. It was familiar to President and former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe Dwight D. Eisenhower  : I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of 'emergency' is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.
      • Speech to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference in Washington, D.C. (November 14, 1957) ; from Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957, National Archives and Records Service, Government Printing Office, p. 818 : ISBN 0160588510, 9780160588518
  • A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
    • This quote is commonly attributed to Churchill, but appears in the "Red Herrings: False Attributions" appendix of Churchill by Himself : The Definitive Collection of Quotations (2008) by Richard Langworth, without citation as to where it originates.
  • You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
    • Often attributed to Churchill, this thought was originally expressed by the French author Victor Hugo in Villemain (1845), as follows: You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
      • Villemain is a brief segment taken from Hugo’s Choses Vues (Things Seen), a running journal Hugo kept of events he witnessed. The original French versions of these journals were published after Hugo's death.
  • A joke is a very serious thing.
    • Sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill, it is in fact a slight misquote of "A joke's a very serious thing" from the 1763 poem "The Ghost" by Charles Churchill.
  • The idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the cruelest delusions which has befuddled the human mind.
    • Reported in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 13-14, as having been attributed to Churchill by Ronald Reagan in a March 9, 1982 speech.

Quotes about Churchill

Churchill's Finest Hour (November 27, 2009)

Mark Riebling, "Churchill's Finest Hour," City Journal (November 27, 2009). Full essay online

External links