Active on the polit­i­cal scene for an almost unprece­dented fifty years, Churchill saved every­thing he wrote and said, and his archives pro­vide a rich resource. If you try hard enough, you can use him like the Bible, find­ing a quote to sup­port every shade of polit­i­cal opinion—especially pro­vided you care­fully avoid the larger con­text. In this way, Churchill has been labeled an anti-semite, a war­mon­ger, a con­spir­a­tor in the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor, the pro­moter of poi­son gas against Iraqis, an inside cause of the 1929 Wall Street crash, and other inani­ties too numer­ous to mention.

Many gen­uine quotes from Churchill By Him­self  have not only stood the test of time but sound eerily famil­iar in today’s world:

 ”Broadly speak­ing, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are the best of all.”  —Accept­ing the Times Lit­er­ary Award, Lon­don, 2 Novem­ber 1949

“In finance, every­thing that is agree­able is unsound and every­thing that is sound is disagreeable.” —1926

Polit­i­cal Philosophy

Above all was Churchill’s absolute indif­fer­ence to polls or poular­ity. In 1936, when he stood almost alone in Par­lia­ment urg­ing his coun­try to rearm in the face of Hitler,. This ring­ing dec­la­ra­tion shows how far Churchill ranks above the ordi­nary politician—in any age

“I would endure with patience the roar of exul­ta­tion that would go up when I was proved wrong, because it would lift a load off my heart and off the hearts of many Mem­bers. What does it mat­ter who gets exposed or dis­com­fited? If the coun­try is safe, who cares for indi­vid­ual politi­cians, in or out of office?”  —1936

Show­ing that you can use Churchill to sup­port all sides, here is a quo­ta­tion we con­firmed for the Obama cam­paign in 2008, over the ques­tion of whether it is proper to meet and talk with dis­agree­able peo­ple. Churchill said:

“There is noth­ing improper in bel­liger­ents meet­ing to dis­cuss their affairs even while actual bat­tles are going on. All his­tory abounds in prece­dents. All the time that Napoleon was fight­ing his des­per­ate cam­paigns in France in 1814 the Inter­na­tional Coun­cil, com­posed of his rep­re­sen­ta­tives and those of the Allies, were in con­stant con­fer­ence at Chatillon-sur-Seine.” —1954

And here is another Churchill quote which the McCain Cam­paign asked for:

“Class quar­rels, end­less party strife, on a back­ground of apa­thy, indif­fer­ence and bewil­der­ment, will lead us all to ruin. Only a new surge of impulse can win us back the glo­ri­ous ascen­dancy which we gained in the strug­gle for right and free­dom, and for which our fore­bears had nerved our hearts down the long aisles of time. Let us make a supreme effort to sur­mount our dan­gers. Let faith—not appetite—guide our steps.”  —1945

The belief that politi­cians are moti­vated only by oppor­tunism and get­ting re-elected is respon­si­ble for the mod­ern cli­mate of doubt and dis­trust in gov­ern­ment – and, more dan­ger­ously, in time­proven insti­tu­tions and nations. A pop­u­lar lament is that we have no Churchills. Yet we have some lead­ers who fol­low Churchill’s dic­tum, say­ing what they believe regard­less of the con­se­quences. There is hope yet…

On Elec­tions

“No one has ever sug­gested that pro­longed elec­tion­eer­ing is capa­ble of set­tling our problems….One can hardly imag­ine any­thing more unfor­tu­nate than that we should find our­selves split in half on domes­tic pol­i­tics, with both par­ties gath­er­ing and arrang­ing their forces for another trial of strength. That this should con­tinue for many months with­out rem­edy can only be dis­as­trous to our pros­per­ity, and may well endan­ger both our life and even our sur­vival as a great power.” —1950

“I have noticed that when­ever a dis­tin­guished politi­cian declares that a par­tic­u­lar ques­tion is above Party, what he really means is that every­body, with­out dis­tinc­tion of Party, shall vote for him.” —1905

CHURCHILL AT LARGE

On Mus­lim Warriors

“How dread­ful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides  the fanat­i­cal frenzy, which is as dan­ger­ous in a man as hydropho­bia in a dog, there is this fear­ful fatal­is­tic apa­thy. The effects are appar­ent in many coun­tries. Improv­i­dent habits, slovenly sys­tems of agri­cul­ture, slug­gish meth­ods of com­merce, and inse­cu­rity of prop­erty exist wher­ever the fol­low­ers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sen­su­al­ism deprives this life of its grace and refine­ment; the next of its dig­nity and sanc­tity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinc­tion of slav­ery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

“Yet these were as brave men as ever walked the earth. The con­vic­tion was borne in on me that their claim beyond the grave in respect of a valiant death was not less good than that which any of our coun­try­men could make.” —1899

On Mag­na­nim­ity

“When the ancient Athe­ni­ans, on one occa­sion, over­pow­ered a tribe in the Pelo­pon­nesus which had wrought them injury by base, treach­er­ous means, and when they had the hos­tile army herded on a beach naked for slaugh­ter, they for­gave them and set them free, and they said: ‘This was not because they were men; it was done because of the nature of Man.’” —1945

On Polit­i­cal Inertia

“Any­one can see what the posi­tion is. The Gov­ern­ment sim­ply can­not make up their minds, or they can­not get the Prime Min­is­ter to make up his mind. So they go on in strange para­dox, decided only to be unde­cided, resolved to be irres­olute, adamant for drift, solid for flu­id­ity, all-powerful to be impo­tent. So we go on prepar­ing more months and years—precious per­haps to the great­ness of Britain—for the locusts to eat.” —1938

CHURCHILL’S RELEVANCE TO CURRENT CONTENTIONS

Scot­tish Sci­en­tists Clone a Sheep

“There seems lit­tle doubt that it will be pos­si­ble to carry out in arti­fi­cial sur­round­ings the entire cycle which now leads to the birth of a child. Inter­fer­ence with the men­tal devel­op­ment of such beings, expert sug­ges­tion and treat­ment in the ear­lier years, would pro­duce beings spe­cial­ized to thought or toil….A being might be pro­duced capa­ble of tend­ing a machine but with­out other ambi­tions.”  —1931

The Era of Big Government

“Social­ism has become intel­lec­tu­ally dis­cred­ited. It no longer presents itself as a solu­tion of human dif­fi­cul­ties or as an effec­tive and prac­ti­cal philosophy….We have seen grisly exam­ples of the ruin which it brought to States, indus­tries and com­mu­ni­ties of all kinds, whether it was applied on the largest or on the small­est scale….It ihas been proved on a gigan­tic scale and with per­fect clear­ness to be fatal to the wel­fare of liv­ing nations.” —1929

The Next Administration

“Every new admin­is­tra­tion, not exclud­ing our­selves, arrives in power with bright and benev­o­lent ideas of using pub­lic money to do good. The more fre­quent the changes of Gov­ern­ment, the more numer­ous are the bright ideas, and the more fre­quent the elec­tions, the more benev­o­lent they become.”  —1927

Richard M. Nixon, R.I.P.

“It might be said that he out­lived his future by ten years and his past by more than twenty. The bril­liant prospects which had shone before him until he became the leader were dis­persed by the break-up of his Gov­ern­ment and the defeat of his Party. The part he took as a patriot in sup­port­ing the War destroyed his hold upon the regard and con­fi­dence of the Rad­i­cal masses….He sev­ered him­self by pur­pose­ful action from his friends and followers….Within a decade after achiev­ing the pin­na­cle his polit­i­cal career was closed for ever. It was only two decades later that his long life ended.”  —On Lord Rose­bery, 1937

Peace­mak­ing in Ireland

“Let us not be led by impa­tience, by prej­u­dice, by vex­a­tion, by anx­i­ety, into courses which would lay us open to charges of fick­le­ness or lev­ity in deal­ing with those issues so long last­ing as the rela­tions between the two islands. Let us so direct our steps that, in spite of every dis­ap­point­ment, we give this Treaty arrange­ment every pos­si­ble chance of becom­ing the true act of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.” —1922

Peace­mak­ing in the Mid­dle East

“My Dear Weizmann…The won­der­ful exer­tions which Israel is mak­ing in these times of dif­fi­culty are cheer­ing to an old Zion­ist like me. I trust you may work with Jor­dan and the rest of the Moslem world. With true com­rade­ship there will be enough for all.” —1951

Pales­tin­ian Statehood

“When the Arab munic­i­pal­i­ties are con­duct­ing their affairs with any­thing like the pro­gres­sive vigour that is shown by the Jew­ish com­mu­nity, and when you have come to the point of the whole prin­ci­ple of local gov­ern­ment hav­ing been imple­mented by the good will and activ­i­ties of the pop­u­la­tion, your case will be enor­mously stronger for a for­ward move­ment.”  —1936

Civil War in the Balkans

“In the moun­tains there began again the fierce guer­rilla with which the Serbs had resisted the Turks for centuries….This con­fronted the Ger­mans with a prob­lem which could not be solved by the mass exe­cu­tions of nota­bles or per­sons of sub­stance. They found them­selves con­fronted by des­per­ate men who had to be hunted down in their lairs. No reprisals, how­ever bloody, upon hostages or vil­lages deterred them.”  —1921

Britain Drop­ping the Monarchy

“Igno­rant peo­ple are often dis­posed to imag­ine that progress con­sists in con­vert­ing one­self from a monar­chy into a repub­lic. In this coun­try we have known the bless­ings of lim­ited monar­chy. Great tra­di­tional and con­sti­tu­tional chains of events have come to make an arrange­ment, to make a sit­u­a­tion, unwrit­ten, which enables our affairs to pro­ceed on what I believe is a supe­rior level of smooth­ness and of demo­c­ra­tic progress.” —1944

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