Drift it is….

Churchillian Drift is just the tick­et. I have been look­ing for a term to describe the numer­ous pot­ted, inac­cu­rate Churchill quotes. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth puts its trousers on.” That is big right now on Twit­ter. “Suc­cess is not final, fail­ure is not fatal: it is the courage to con­tin­ue that counts.” Every­body uses that one repeatedly.

“If you’e going through hell, keep going.” No one knows who said that, but it wasn’t Churchill. Then there is: “If I were your hus­band, I’d drink it.” That is Churchill’s alleged retort to Lady Astor’s threat to poi­son his cof­fee. Most like­ly it was uttered by his friend F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead.

In August 2018, Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott cred­it­ed Churchill in a Tweet: “The fas­cists of the future will call them­selves anti-fas­cists.” Kudos to the Guv’nor for delet­ing that one.

“Gnomology”

Pro­fes­sor Man­fred Wei­d­horn puts us onto Churchillian Drift. This is explained by James Geary, a “gno­mol­o­gist” (quote mavens get to wear this impres­sive title) who shares Dr. Weidhorn’s vice of col­lect­ing aphorisms:

Churchillian Drift was devised by British gno­mol­o­gist Nigel Rees: “I coined the term to describe the process where­by the orig­i­na­tor of a quo­ta­tion is elbowed to one side and replaced by some­one more famous. So to Churchill or Napoleon would be ascribed what, actu­al­ly, a less­er-known polit­i­cal fig­ure said. The process occurs in all fields.

Churchillian Drift bobs up among some of the biggest names in the apho­rism busi­ness. Not just Churchill and Napoleon. Albert Ein­stein is pop­u­lar.  (Not every­thing that counts can be count­ed.) So is Mahat­ma Gand­hi (Be the change you wish to see in the world.) And of course Hon­est Abe gets his share. (“A house divid­ed against itself can­not stand” was quot­ed by Lin­coln from the Bible.)

But remem­ber this, Dr. Wei­d­horn con­tin­ues.  “You do not find your­self the tar­get of Churchillian Drift unless, like Churchill, you are already a fine apho­rist. Part of the rea­son it’s so easy to mis­at­tribute bril­liant say­ings to great apho­rists is that they have already coined so many bril­liant say­ings themselves.

“Which is also why they might feel occa­sion­al­ly jus­ti­fied in pur­loin­ing an orphan phrase to make it their own. After all, Franklin may or may not have orig­i­nat­ed the apho­rism, ‘Nei­ther a bor­row­er nor a lender be.’ But he nev­er said any­thing against being a plagiarist….”

Yogi Berra Drift

Pro­fes­sor Wei­d­horn adds:

Churchill him­self used some of his best-known say­ings ear­ly in his career but no one noticed, so my adden­dum to this the­o­ry is that not just the stature of the per­son mat­ters but the occasion—1940-42, Churchill’s finest hour, being high dra­ma on the world stage.

There’s real­ly noth­ing Churchillian about it. You could just as well call it the Yogi Berra drift. “I nev­er said many of the things I said,” Yogi said—ALLEGEDLY.

It’s close­ly relat­ed to the phe­nom­e­non of a charis­mat­ic fig­ure—Alexan­der the Great, King Arthur, Jesus—becom­ing like a black hole that draws in mis­cel­la­neous sto­ries that were just lying around and then are con­nect­ed to the famous figure.

Further reading

If  you suf­fer from an irre­sistible urge to sub­ject your­self to mass­es of fake Churchill quotes, I’ve list­ed every one I’ve researched on this web­site. The list is so long, it requires four posts. Click here for Part 1.

The Dubi­ous Achieve­ment Award for the largest col­lec­tion of fake Churchillisms goes to A-Z Quotes, which lists so many I couldn’t get through them all.