Category: Quotations

revisioon
“It was a great work, and I wish you could now add another chapter to your own career.” The ghost of John Churchill looks over our author’s shoulder. (E.H. Shepard in Punch, 2 November 1938)
How Churchill Polished and Improved His Writing by Constant Revision

How Churchill Polished and Improved His Writing by Constant Revision

Con­densed from “Con­stant Revi­sion,” an arti­cle under my pen name for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the com­plete text click here.

Revision and redraft

We are asked: “As I recall Churchill labeled his man­u­scripts some­thing like “draft,” “almost final draft” and “final draft.” Do you recall what those cat­e­gories were?”

We can­not estab­lish that he rou­tine­ly used those labels. Instead he tend­ed to use “revise” or “revi­sion.” Fre­quent­ly his fin­ished draft was marked “final revise.” It often took a long time before, with a sigh of relief, his pri­vate office staff reached that point.…

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Election
Blue: Conservatives. Red: Labour. Yellow: SNP. Orange: Liberal Democrats. Pink: Democratic Unionist Party. Dark green: Sinn Féin. Medium green: Plaid Cymru. Light Green: Green Party. Yellow-orange: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. White: Speaker of the House of Commons. (Wikimedia / Creative Commons)
British Election for Dummies: Churchillian Reflections from Afar

British Election for Dummies: Churchillian Reflections from Afar

…In which an igno­rant Yank with a slight remem­brance of his­to­ry pon­ders the impli­ca­tions. (Friends in Hert­ford­shire write: “What an elec­tion. Let’s hope now we can move on and sort this coun­try out and become Great Britain again.🇬🇧“) Elec­toral map image repro­duced under the Cre­ative Com­mons-Share Alike 4.0 Inter­na­tion­al license. For a detailed map with results by name or con­stituen­cy, see Bloomberg News. Piers Mor­gan on ardent anti-Brex­it actor Hugh Grant: “Hugh’s sor­ry now. Corbyn’s celebri­ty fans weep into their almond milk lattes.” Note: Even Grant approved Johnson’s cam­paign ad, spun off of Hugh’s charm­ing film “Love Actu­al­ly.”…

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health care
1944 was a good time for WSC to think about health care. In January, meeting with Generals Eisenhower and Alexander in Tunis, the patient (in his famous dragon-bespangled dressing gown) was just recovering from a near-death encounter with pneumonia. (Wikimedia Commons: UK government photo, public domain)
Winston Churchill on Health Care (1): “The Inheritance of All”

Winston Churchill on Health Care (1): “The Inheritance of All”

Q: Churchill on health care

(Updat­ed from 2009). A state­ment by Churchill on health care has been offered to show that he would sup­port U.S. heath care reforms. My Catholic parish pub­lished the afore­men­tioned state­ment in its week­ly bulletin.

“What Would Churchill Do? Here’s an inter­est­ing quote. It’s from for­mer British Prime Min­is­ter Win­ston Churchill explain­ing his view on  health care and gov­ern­ment in 1948. ‘The dis­cov­er­ies of heal­ing sci­ence must be the inher­i­tance of all. That is clear. Dis­ease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poor­est or the rich­est man or woman sim­ply on the ground that it is the ene­my.…

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Atatürk Erdogan
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (Webtekno, Istanbul)
Turkey, Erdoğan, David Goldman and Winston Churchill

Turkey, Erdoğan, David Goldman and Winston Churchill

In the light of recent con­tro­ver­sy over the right pos­ture to take over Turkey and the Kurds, this three-year-old post seems as instruc­tive as ever. Updat­ed and republished.

David Goldman, Teacher

The 2016 Hills­dale Col­lege Alas­ka cruise aimed to edu­cate, and so it did. I learned more from David Gold­man about Erdoğan, Turkey and the Mid­dle East in an hour than from any­thing I’ve read over the last five years.

David Gold­man, a New York econ­o­mist, is a colum­nist for First Things mag­a­zine and writes under the name “Spen­gler” for Asia Times Online. Pre­vi­ous­ly he was the glob­al head of cred­it strat­e­gy for Cred­it Suisse, and head of fixed income research at Bank of Amer­i­ca.…

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war shame
Churchill to Moyne (circled): “We shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a little later.” Coalition ministers, May 1940. Standing L-R: Sir Archibald Sinclair, A.V. Alexander, Lord Cranborne. Herbert Morrison, Lord Moyne. Captain Margesson, Brendan Bracken. Seated L-R: Ernest Bevin, Lord Beaverbrook, Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Winston Churchill, Sir John Anderson, Arthur Greenwood, Sir Kingsley Wood. (Imperial War Museum / public domain)
Churchill’s words: Choosing between War and Shame—and getting both.

Churchill’s words: Choosing between War and Shame—and getting both.

It is fre­quent­ly asked: What did Churchill say about those who trade hon­or for peace hav­ing in nei­ther in the end?

“War and Shame”

There are two quo­ta­tions. The first was Churchill in a let­ter to Lloyd George on 13 August 1938, just before the Munich Con­fer­ence, which led to World War II a year later.

I think we shall have to choose in the next few weeks between war and shame, and I have very lit­tle doubt what the deci­sion will be.

Ref­er­ence is Churchill by Him­self, page 256, quot­ing Mar­tin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Doc­u­ments, vol.…

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Europe
Churchill and Eden, 29 June 1954. With by Canada Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent (L) and External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson (R). Rockcliffe Airport, Ottawa. (Library & Archives Canada, reproduced with permission)
Churchill Red Herrings: On a Federal Europe and “Keep England White”

Churchill Red Herrings: On a Federal Europe and “Keep England White”

"Keep England White" is not a direct quote, nor did the words ever appear in public. Also, Macmillan followed it with an exclamation mark, which could mean that Churchill said it in jest. Ask yourself: Would any astute politician, even then, seriously propose this as a campaign slogan?

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Iron Curtain
4 March 1946: Churchill with President Truman on the observation platform of a B&O Special, en route to Fulton, Missouri for Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech. Seated at right is the President’s Military Aide, General Harry Vaughan, who would soon be trimming Churchill at poker. (See http://bit.ly/2ZIUlRN.) (Photograph by Abbie Rowe, National Archives / Public domain)
Churchillian Phrases: “Special Relationship” and “Iron Curtain”

Churchillian Phrases: “Special Relationship” and “Iron Curtain”

"Iron Curtain" has been tracked back to Martin Luther in a 1521 essay, “Concerning the Letter and the Spirit.” The relevant passage is as follows: “The letter [law] does not allow anyone to stand before his wrath. The Spirit does not allow anyone to perish before his grace. Oh, this is such an overwhelming affair that one could talk about it endlessly! But the pope and human law have hidden it from us and have put up an iron curtain in front of it."

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Johnson Trump
A Boris balloon launched outside Parliament during an anti-Brexit protest, 20 July 2019. The “£350m” refers to the amount Mr. Johnson promised to wrest back from the EU to spend on Britain’s National Health Service. (Associated Press, Boston Globe)
Johnson, Trump…can we stop comparing everybody to Churchill?

Johnson, Trump…can we stop comparing everybody to Churchill?

Politi­cians, like Boris John­son and Don­ald Trump at the moment, are often com­pared to Win­ston Churchill. In a way it’s nice PR for Sir Win­ston. Half a cen­tu­ry since his death, the Great­est Briton still dom­i­nates media. His Google hit count is 100 mil­lion. (Franklin Roo­sevelt, the West’s oth­er great war leader, is at 72 million.)

Right­ly or wrong­ly, every day on the Inter­net, Churchill is praised, lam­pooned, quot­ed and mis­quot­ed. But com­par­isons to mod­ern politi­cians have worn thin. They may emu­late him, but should not be com­pared to him.

Johnson’s Day in the barrel

On 15 June the Wall Street Jour­nal focused on British prime min­is­ter in wait­ing Boris John­son.…

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PM
Read BBC News for an early report on the new PM’s cabinet at https://bbc.in/2y89KzJ
“The Respectable Tendency” and the New PM, 1940-2019

“The Respectable Tendency” and the New PM, 1940-2019

Anent the new PM

My friend Steve Hay­ward had the wit to para­phrase, in reac­tion to the arrival of Boris John­son at 10 Down­ing Street, some com­ments about anoth­er incom­ing PM, eighty years ago next May. “Cam­bridge Cute,” says anoth­er friend of Steve’s good piece.

Speak­ing of Cam­bridge Cuties, I imme­di­ate­ly thought of what Andrew Roberts described as “The Respectable Ten­den­cy,” the British estab­lish­ment, in his great book, Emi­nent Churchill­lians.  So I dug into the sources to find more of what they said back then about the new Prime Min­is­ter. (Light­ly paraphrased.)

“Coup of the rabble…”

“Even whilst the new PM was still at Buck­ing­ham Palace kiss­ing hands, the junior pri­vate sec­re­tary and Chamberlain’s PPS, Lord Dun­glass [Alec Dou­glas-Home] joined Rab But­ler and ‘Chips’ Chan­non at the For­eign Office.…

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fiction
This one has the distinction of muffing every quote on the cover: five out of five, with one narrow miss. A new record?
Churchillian Fiction Continues to Roll off the Presses

Churchillian Fiction Continues to Roll off the Presses

Churchill quotes in the realm of fic­tion are a well-known fea­ture of the pop­u­lar cul­ture. So good an apho­rist was Churchill that even posthu­mous­ly, he con­tin­ues to “man­u­fac­ture” quote fic­tion. Some­times it’s the work of an obscure fig­ure, pinned on Churchill to make it more interesting.

The schol­ar Man­fred Wei­d­horn has an expla­na­tion for what we call Churchillian (or Yogi Berra) Drift: “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.”…

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RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks


Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

Churchill by Himself

Churchill in His Own Words

Churchill and the Avoidable War

The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill

The Patriot’s Churchill

Triumph Cars - The Complete Story
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