Quotations Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill in Manchester: Clem in the Gents, Huns at Your Throat

15 May 2024 Comments 0 Comments

William Manchester offered two famous Churchill jibes, one original, the other borrowed. David Pitblado reliably confirmed Churchill's famous crack to Clement Attlee in the Gents Loo in the House of Commons. Churchill himself admitted that somebody else first said "The Hun is either at your feet or at your throat."

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Myths of Dear Benito: Churchill’s Alleged Mussolini Complex

5 May 2024 Comments 0 Comments

Churchill agreed to defer Italian war debt payments until 1930. Mussolini sent “the warmest expressions of gratitude” and offered him a decoration. Er, no, said WSC. (Imagine if that was among Churchill’s medals.) But Churchill's diplomatic boilerplate in Rome has been used to brand him as a fascist. In context, he referred to the Italians, not the British. And you tend to say polite things about a foreign leader when he has promised to pay back a lot of money.

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Churchill Misquotes: Never give up and Definition of Fanatic

30 April 2024 Comments 0 Comments

The ranks of fake Churchill quotes reaches almost 200 in the next edition of "Churchill by Himself," and are meanwhile kept up to date on this website. These two are all over the web and constantly repeated. They probably stem from the many inaccurate “wit and wisdom” quotation books.

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Churchill’s Hitler Essays: He Knew the Führer from the Start

15 April 2024 Comments 0 Comments

"The astounding thing is that the great German people, educated, scientific, philosophical, romantic, the people of the Christmas tree, the people of Goethe and Schiller, of Bach and Beethoven, Heine, Leibnitz, Kant and a hundred other great names, have not only not resented this horrible blood-bath, but have endorsed it and acclaimed its author with the honours not only of a sovereign but almost of a god.... Can we really believe that a hierarchy and society built upon such deeds can be entrusted with the possession of the most prodigious military machinery yet planned among men?" —WSC, 1937

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Churchill Quotes: Mooing Dolefully; Fight When You Can Win

10 April 2024 Comments 0 Comments

"Winston was enormously witty. He spoke of 'this great country nosing from door to door like a cow that has lost its calf, mooing dolefully, now in Berlin and now in Rome—when all the time the tiger and the alligator wait for its undoing.' Don't be worried, my darling. I am not going to become one of the Winston brigade." —Harold Nicolson, March 1938. "But really he has got guts, that man. Imagine the effect of his speech in the Empire and the USA. I felt a great army of men and women of resolution watching for the fight. And I felt that all the silly people were but black-beetles scurrying into holes." —Harold Nicolson, July 1940

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Get Ready for Churchill’s Anti-Sesquicentennial

25 March 2024 Comments 1 Comment

"Don't worry about attacks on Churchill. He is alive and kicking and haunts the British imagination like no other. He will always be caricatured, as he was in his lifetime. But freedom of speech and expression was one of the things he fought for, and in his time he gave as good as he got. The more provocative comments about him are a backhanded tribute, as they work on the assumption that most people admire him." —Paul Addison

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Fake Churchill Quotations: Democracy, Life, Living, Enemies

15 March 2024 Comments 0 Comments

<> Among fake quotations, this one is famous. It was revived by broadcaster Trevor Phillips in The Times. Mr. Phillips was explaining that British Conservatives, almost certainly to be the Opposition after the next election, need to stand strong—particularly against themselves. No quarrel with his logic, only his attribution.

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Churchill Quotes: “Law Above the King” and “All Will Be Well”

29 February 2024 Comments 0 Comments

"A law which is above the King" occurs in Churchill's "The Birth of Britain" (London: Cassell, 1956). He was explaining Magna Carta, the Great Charter of Freedoms, one of the towering benchmarks of Western Civilization. “All will be well” was a very frequent expression. In South Africa in 1899-1900, the young Winston had picked up the Afrikaans phrase "Alles sal regkom" or “All will come right.” He used both phrases interchangeably because they expressed his sentiment.

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Sir Martin Gilbert on Churchill and the Holocaust

20 January 2024 Comments 1 Comment

Why so little of the Holocaust in Churchill's war memoirs? There were many reasons. Intelligence restrictions were still in place, war crimes trials were occurring. Churchill had an understandable reluctance to criticize American officials who had blocked his order to bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz. Churchill was never never one to open a quarrel with allies over the past. Also, as Lady Gilbert pointed out that it wasn't actually known as the Holocaust for years later.

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Winston Churchill’s Tests of Freedom: Then and Now

10 January 2024 Comments 0 Comments

"These simple, practical tests, are some of the title-deeds on which a new Italy could be founded." Think of the years of experience, thought, and hard political lessons that went into those basic tenets. How Churchill expressed them in only 201 words, mostly of one or two syllables. How little they are thought of today, when we try to describe certain nations as free countries.

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