Fake Quotes Archives - Page 5 of 8 - Richard M. Langworth

All the “Quotes” Churchill Never Said (2: Fanatic to Liberty)

16 November 2018 Comments 5 Comments

“Red Herrings”: Fake Churchill Quotes (or things he said quoting someone else), continued from Part 1.… Compiled for the next expanded edition of Churchill by Himself. Chapter references are to current editions of that book.

“If you’re going through hell, keep going” is the most common counterfeit. Heard by everyone from presidents to comics, it is sheer fantasy—Churchill wasn’t given to such redundancy. What’s your favorite among these Red Herrings? Mine is the one about golf, which I experienced personally before I wisely gave the game up.

Fanatic – France

Fanatic: A fanatic is someone who won’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.…

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All the “Quotes” Churchill Never Said (1: Accept Change-European Union)

8 November 2018 Comments 2 Comments

Fake Quotes: A-E

In 1686 the Oxford English Dictionary described “red herring,” a metaphor to draw pursuers off a track, as “the trailing or dragging of a dead Cat or Fox (and in case of necessity a Red-Herring) three or four miles…and then laying the Dogs on the scent…to attempt to divert attention from the real question.” I apply the term to quotes, allegedly by Churchill, which he never said—or if he did, was quoting somebody else.

Hence my Red Herrings Appendix, updated herewith, for the new, expanded edition of my quotes book Churchill by Himself.…

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Before the microphones, 1940. (Library of Congress)

AZ Quotes: A Cornucopia of Things Churchill Never Said

6 September 2018 Comments 9 Comments

Much of my labor in the Churchill Vineyard involves researching quotations “AZ.” My 650-page books and ebooks, Churchill by Himself and Churchill in His Own Words, are the largest sources of Churchill’s philosophy, maxims, reflections and ripostes accompanied by a valid source for each entry. There are 4,150 entries, but a new, expanded and revised edition is coming. It will include a much larger appendix of “Red Herrings”—oft-repeated passages he never said but constantly ascribed to him.

“Red Herrings” are part of what quotemaster Nigel Rees calls “Churchillian Drift.” (Click here for the full description.)…

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Churchill, Women’s Suffrage and “Black Friday,” November 1910

13 August 2018 Comments 0 Comments

“Churchill, Suffrage and Black Friday”: excerpted from my article for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the full text, including Churchill’s letters to the head of the Metropolitan Police (22 November 1910) and to Prime Minister Asquith (21 December 1911), click here.

A London University student writes for help with his dissertation. Its topic is the relationship between Home Secretary Winston Churchill, the Metropolitan Police, and their handling of women’s suffrage demonstrators in November 1910. His questions illustrate Churchill’s domestic statesmanship. Our answers refute the belief that Churchill stridently opposed women’s suffrage except on isolated occasions in political tactics.…

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“Too Easy to Be Good”: The Churchill Marriage and Lady Castlerosse

17 March 2018 Comments 2 Comments

My article, “The Churchill Marriage and Lady Castlerosse” was first published by The American Spectator on 13 March 2018.

“Here Firm, Though All Be Drifting” —WSC

It’s all over the Internet, so it must be true. Not only did Winston Churchill oppose women’s rights, gas tribesmen, starve Indians, firebomb Dresden, nurse anti-Semitism and wish to nuke Moscow. He even cheated on his wife—in a four-year affair with Doris Delevingne, Viscountess Castlerosse.

So declare the authors of “Sir John Colville, Churchillian Networks, and the ‘Castlerosse Affair’”—unreservedly repeated by British television, multiple media, even a university: (“Winston Churchill’s affair revealed by forgotten testimony.”…

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“I don’t want [my views] disturbed by any bloody Indian”: Was it Churchill?

5 January 2018 Comments 0 Comments

“I am quite satisfied with my views of India. I don’t want them disturbed by any bloody Indian.” Thus Winston Churchill said (or is alleged to have said) to Lord Halifax née Lord Irwin née Edward Wood, in 1929.

“Bludgeon of choice”

A historian friend says the Indian Bengal Famine (1943) “is on its way to surpassing the Dardanelles (1915) as the bludgeon of choice for Churchill’s detractors.” He was commenting on the latest outburst of Bengal Famine nonsense—contested by a thoughtful Indian, as well as myself: scroll to comments.

“Bloody Indian” tracks to Ben Pimlott, editor, The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton 1940-45 (Jonathan Cape 1986), 126.…

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“Darkest Hour,” the movie: an interview with The Australian

28 December 2017 Comments 14 Comments

For The Australian …

Troy Bramston of The Australian newspaper had pertinent questions about the new movie Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill. With the thought that Troy’s queries might be of interest, I append the text of the interview.

The Australian : Of all the things Winston Churchill is purported to have said and done, the myths and misconceptions, which are the most prevalent and frustrating for scholars? None of these appear in the film, but there are three things that rankle: 1) The lies—that he was anxious to use poison gas; that he firebombed Dresden in revenge for Coventry; that he exacerbated the Bengal famine, etc.…

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Mr. Stern, Mr. Trump, Churchill Quotes and Misquotes

28 November 2017 Comments 0 Comments

November 27th— Writing in the Daily Beast, Mr. Marlow Stern praises Kristin Scott Thomas (“Clementine Churchill” in the new movie Darkest Hour) and announces: “Donald Trump is No Winston Churchill.” (Past doubt, but who is?)

Mr. Stern himself offers only one Churchill quote and gets it right: “A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny.” (Colliers, 28 December 1935.)

Bingo! That’s an obscure one. Forgive him for vastly exaggerating Churchill’s alcohol intake. (WSC’s “six whisky sodas” were described by his private secretary as “scotch-flavored mouthwash.”…

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Frederick Lindemann: Churchill’s Eminence Grise?

21 August 2017 Comments 6 Comments

Revisionist History, Season 2, Episode 5, “The Prime Minister and the Prof [ Frederick Lindemann ],” podcast by Malcolm Gladwell.

A popular weekly half hour podcast, Revisionist History takes aim at shibboleths, real and imagined. This episode is Churchill’s turn in the barrel.

Scientific Nemesis

The villain, aside from Sir Winston, is his scientific adviser, Frederick Lindemann, later Lord Cherwell, aka “The Prof.” You’ve probably never heard of him, says narrator Malcolm Gladwell. You should have. It was Lindemann who made Churchill bomb innocent German civilians and starve the Bengalis.

Ironically, the program begins with an ad for its sponsor, Chanel Perfume.…

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“Rascals, Rogues and Freebooters”: Churchill and India

22 July 2017 Comments 48 Comments

“Rascals, Rogues and Freebooters”

“Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low calibre & men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles.”

The statement above is attributed to Churchill. I cannot find it, as a speech or in a book. Although it is widely and increasingly quoted in the Indian press and, given what is happening, he seems to have been prophetic! —K.P., India

This post has the distinction of engendering the most comment among the 500 on my website.…

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