Category: Quotations

Jibes
“Dawn in Dundee,” 1922: A cartoon in the “Dundee Advertiser” (the paper, not the politician) quotes Henry V, Act 5 Sc. 1: “All Hell shall stir for this.” Churchill had lost his seat, his party, and his appendix in the general election. (Public domain)
Jibes and Insults: Churchill Took As Good As He Gave

Jibes and Insults: Churchill Took As Good As He Gave

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Not all were pleasant ribbing: “The Prime Minister wins Debate after Debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights Debates like a war and the war like a Debate.... [His speech indulged] in these turgid, wordy, dull, prosaic and almost invariably empty new chapters in his book…while dressed in some uniform of some sort or other. I wish he would recognise that he is the civilian head of a civilian Government, and not go parading around in ridiculous uniforms.” —Nye Bevan

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theme
Men with a Theme: Meeting with U.S. naval authorities, Admiralty, London, May 1942. L-R: Capt. Charles Baker USN, First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, U.S. Ambassador Gil Winant, First Lord of the Admiralty A.V. Alexander, U.S. Naval Forces in Europe Commander Admiral H.R. Stark, Winston Churchill, Chief of Staff Capt. Ralph Wentworth USN, Capt. H.A. Flanigan, USN. (Imperial War Museum, public domain)
Churchillisms: Puddings Without a Theme

Churchillisms: Puddings Without a Theme

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"[We are] passing through a period of eclipse which may well be converted into a period of decline. There is anxiety abroad, and can we wonder at it! Why should the Government complain? Look at all they have said. Look at all they protest they stand for…. They have no theme [and] have deluded the masses of their supporters in the country into believing they are about to bring into being some vast, splendid, new world." —WSC

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index
“Member for Woodford”: Leslie Illingworth in “Punch,” 30 November 1949. As Churchill turned 75, still in the thick of politics, Illingworth crafted this eloquent tribute. (Reprinted by courtesy of Topfoto and Gary Stiles from his book, “Churchill in Punch”)
Coming: New Churchill Phrase Index in My Next Quotebook

Coming: New Churchill Phrase Index in My Next Quotebook

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Coming from Hillsdale College Press, the new edition will carry a brand new title in keeping with its far larger content. Earlier editions contained 3500 quotations; they now total over 5000. Many new ones derive from The Churchill Documents, 1942 to 1965, also published by Hillsdale. The preliminary proofs total 736 pages, but that's without the indexes. These are being compiled by the award-winning lecturer Do Mi Stauber. 

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Randolph Churchill
The White House, 9 April 1963. President John F. Kennedy declares Sir Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States. On steps, front row (L-R): Undersecretary of State, George Ball, British Ambassador Sir David Ormsby-Gore, President Kennedy, Randolph Churchill. Back rows (L-R): Deputy Chief of Protocol William J. Tonesk (mostly behind Ball), Sylvia Ormsby-Gore, Randolph’s son Winston, President’s naval aide Tazewell Shepard. Secret Service agent Art Godfrey is at far right. (Photograph by White House photographer Cecil Stoughton. presented to Richard Langworth, 1988, public domain)
D-Day+80: National Celebrations, Eighty Years On

D-Day+80: National Celebrations, Eighty Years On

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And so on 6 June 1944 we launched the great crusade, as Eisenhower put it (today perhaps politically incorrectly). Western civilization was saved. Yet it was not, William F. Buckley Jr. argued, “the significance of that victory, mighty and glorious though it was, that causes the name of Churchill to make the blood run a little faster....It is the roar that we hear, when we pronounce his name….The genius of Churchill was his union of affinities of the heart and of the mind, the total fusion of animal and spiritual energy."

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Marlborough
John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough. (Dulwich Picture Gallery, public domain)
Marlborough Drift: The Dallying Duke

Marlborough Drift: The Dallying Duke

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John Churchill (not yet a Duke) "was hidden in the cupboard of Barbara Palmer (not yet a Duchess). After having prowled about the chamber the King, much upset, asked for sweets and liqueurs. His mistress declared that the key of the cupboard was lost. The King replied that he would break down the door.On this she opened the door, and fell on her knees on one side while Churchill, discovered, knelt on the other...."

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Manchester
Churchill and Clement Attlee (Hansard Society)
Churchill in Manchester: Clem in the Gents, Huns at Your Throat

Churchill in Manchester: Clem in the Gents, Huns at Your Throat

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William Manchester offered two famous Churchill jibes, one original, the other borrowed. David Pitblado reliably confirmed Churchill's famous crack to Clement Attlee in the Gents Loo in the House of Commons. Churchill himself admitted that somebody else first said "The Hun is either at your feet or at your throat."

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Benito
Churchill wasn’t the last British statesman to wend his way to Rome. Chamberlain arrived in 1939, posed at the Rome Opera House with Il Duce and their respective foreign ministers, Halifax and Ciano. (Wikimedia Commons)
Myths of Dear Benito: Churchill’s Alleged Mussolini Complex

Myths of Dear Benito: Churchill’s Alleged Mussolini Complex

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Churchill agreed to defer Italian war debt payments until 1930. Mussolini sent “the warmest expressions of gratitude” and offered him a decoration. Er, no, said WSC. (Imagine if that was among Churchill’s medals.) But Churchill's diplomatic boilerplate in Rome has been used to brand him as a fascist. In context, he referred to the Italians, not the British. And you tend to say polite things about a foreign leader when he has promised to pay back a lot of money.  

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Never
Harrow School, Middlesex, where WSC frequently returned as an “Old Boy” from the 1940s on. (Wikimedia Commons)
Churchill Misquotes: Never give up and Definition of Fanatic

Churchill Misquotes: Never give up and Definition of Fanatic

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The ranks of fake Churchill quotes reaches almost 200 in the next edition of "Churchill by Himself," and are meanwhile kept up to date on this website. These two are all over the web and constantly repeated. They probably stem from the many inaccurate “wit and wisdom” quotation books.

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Hitler essays
Hitler at a march-past of the purged SA in Nuremberg, September 1935. (Standing second from left, Hermann Göering.) By then the SA was losing power and influence. Its numbers were more than halved by 1938. (Charles Russell Collection, National Archives and Records Administration, public domain)
Churchill’s Hitler Essays: He Knew the Führer from the Start

Churchill’s Hitler Essays: He Knew the Führer from the Start

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"The astounding thing is that the great German people, educated, scientific, philosophical, romantic, the people of the Christmas tree, the people of Goethe and Schiller, of Bach and Beethoven, Heine, Leibnitz, Kant and a hundred other great names, have not only not resented this horrible blood-bath, but have endorsed it and acclaimed its author with the honours not only of a sovereign but almost of a god.... Can we really believe that a hierarchy and society built upon such deeds can be entrusted with the possession of the most prodigious military machinery yet planned among men?" —WSC, 1937

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fight
Harold Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West, Rosamund Grosvenor, Lionel Sackville-West, 1913. (Wikimedia Commons)
Churchill Quotes: Mooing Dolefully; Fight When You Can Win

Churchill Quotes: Mooing Dolefully; Fight When You Can Win

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"Winston was enormously witty. He spoke of 'this great country nosing from door to door like a cow that has lost its calf, mooing dolefully, now in Berlin and now in Rome—when all the time the tiger and the alligator wait for its undoing.' Don't be worried, my darling. I am not going to become one of the Winston brigade." —Harold Nicolson, March 1938. "But really he has got guts, that man. Imagine the effect of his speech in the Empire and the USA. I felt a great army of men and women of resolution watching for the fight. And I felt that all the silly people were but black-beetles scurrying into holes." —Harold Nicolson, July 1940

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