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.”…
A website named “IL Conservative” posted in June 2009 eight Churchill “quotations,” six of which he never said. These quotations are all over the Internet, none of them attributed to WSC. They just seem to multiply and get passed on, like the common cold. They are all examples of “Churchillian Drift” (or “Yogi Berra Drift,” if you are a baseball fan): neat little sayings attached to somebody famous to make them sound more interesting.
The purpose of my “Red Herrings” appendix of eighty incorrect quotations in Churchill by Himself is to counteract the raft of misinformation conveyed, largely through the web, but it’s like the Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dyke.…
