Did Churchill ever make a three word speech, “Never Give Up,” and then just sit down? —A.S., Latvia

That story is all over the web and is con­stantly repeated—even by Maine Gov­er­nor Angus King at the 1999 launch of USS Win­ston S. Churchill. But it is entirely wrong. I think it springs from one of the many inac­cu­rate “wit and wis­dom” quote books.

“Never give in” (not “up”) was part of Churchill’s 20-minute speech to the boys at Har­row, his old school, when he vis­ited Har­row for their annual songfest (“Songs”) on 29 Octo­ber 1941. The entire speech is pub­lished in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Win­ston S. Churchill: His Com­plete Speeches (New York: Bowker, 1974) and in Churchill’s speech vol­ume The Unre­lent­ing Strug­gle (London:Cassell, Boston: Lit­tle Brown, 1942).

The salient por­tion, from Churchill by Him­self pages 23 and 277, is as follows:

This is the les­son: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never–in noth­ing, great or small, large or petty–never give in except to con­vic­tions of hon­our and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the appar­ently over­whelm­ing might of the enemy….Do  not  let  us speak of darker days; let us rather speak of sterner days. These  are  not  dark  days:  these  are  great days—the great­est days our coun­try  has  ever  lived;  and  we  must  all  thank God that we have been allowed,  each of us accord­ing to our sta­tions, to play a part in mak­ing these days mem­o­rable in the his­tory of our race.

Tagged as: Angus King, Harrow, never give in, Robert Rhodes James, Unrelenting Struggle, USS Winston S. Churchill