Category: Quotations

Portland
“Like giants bowed in anxious thought….”
Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (3): Portland, 1914

Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (3): Portland, 1914

The King’s Ships: “We may now pic­ture this great Fleet, with its flotil­las and cruis­ers, steam­ing slow­ly out of Port­land Har­bour, squadron by squadron, scores of gigan­tic cas­tles of steel wend­ing their way across the misty, shin­ing sea, like giants bowed in anx­ious thought. We may pic­ture them again as dark­ness fell, eigh­teen miles of war­ships run­ning at high speed and in absolute black­ness through the nar­row Straits, bear­ing with them into the broad waters of the North the safe­guard of con­sid­er­able affairs.”

Irish Sea to Portland: Churchill Connections, 8-12 June 2019

The 2019 Hills­dale Col­lege Cruise around Britain was a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to recall the Churchill saga by pass­ing or vis­it­ing key places.…

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Scotland
WSC with his daughter Mary on a later visit to Scapa Flow. (Orkney Library)
Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (2): Scotland, 1939

Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (2): Scotland, 1939

“It was like the oth­ers a love­ly day….On every side rose the pur­ple hills of Scot­land in all their splen­dour…. I felt odd­ly oppressed with my mem­o­ries…. No one had ever been over the same ter­ri­ble course twice with such an inter­val between. No one had felt its dan­gers and respon­si­bil­i­ties from the sum­mit as I had, or, to descend to a small point, under­stood how First Lords of the Admi­ral­ty are treat­ed when great ships are sunk and things go wrong.”

Northern Britain: Churchill Connections, June 4th to 7th

The 2019 Hills­dale Col­lege Cruise around Britain offered a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to recall the Churchill saga by pass­ing or vis­it­ing key places, start­ing with Eng­lish Chan­nel and North Sea venues from Southamp­ton to York­shire to Edin­burgh and the north of Scot­land.…

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Yorkshire
The German High Seas Fleet at Kiel. From Southampton to Norfolk, Yorkshire to the Firth of Forth and Scapa Flow, the enemy’s powerful navy focused Churchill’s strategic planning in the First World War.
Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (1): Yorkshire, 1914

Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (1): Yorkshire, 1914

"Outrage in Yorkshire fell hard against Churchill, who vowed to force the Germans back out if he had to dig them out “like rats in a hole.” There was indignation, he wrote, "at the failure of the Navy to prevent, or at least to avenge, such an attack upon our shores. What was the Admiralty doing? Were they all asleep?... We had to bear in silence the censures of our countrymen."

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contentions
Astronaut Scott Kelly who, when attacked by furious trolls on Twitter, folded like a five dollar suitcase. Really?!
Current Churchill Contentions: “The Invasion of the Idiots”

Current Churchill Contentions: “The Invasion of the Idiots”

“Cur­rent Con­tentions” was deliv­ered at Hills­dale College’s Cen­ter for Con­struc­tive Alter­na­tives sem­i­nar on “Churchill and the Movies,” 27 March 2019. For the video, please click here.

Edit­ed tran­script: The orig­i­nal speech includ­ed cer­tain sub­jects cov­ered ear­li­er and else­where. These are sum­ma­rized below, and pro­vid­ed with links to the orig­i­nal texts. The video, which is unabridged, includes ques­tions and answers with the audience.

Churchill’s World of 1932

Eighty-sev­en years ago, Churchill was here in Michi­gan, in Detroit, Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, on a U.S. lec­ture tour. East, west, north, and south he rode the rails, “liv­ing all day on my back in a rail­way com­part­ment and address­ing in the evening large audi­ences.”…

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white
“In durance vile”: Churchill (right), captured in South Africa, 1899, argued for native equality with his jailers: “British government is associated in the Boer farmer’s mind with violent social revolution. Black is to be proclaimed the same as white,” he wrote. “…nor is a tigress robbed of her cubs more furious than is the Boer at this prospect.”
Revealed Wisdom on the Campus: Churchill was a White Supremacist

Revealed Wisdom on the Campus: Churchill was a White Supremacist

why­Be­gin­ning ten years ago with a flawed account of the 1943 Ben­gal Famine, and fanned by a small cadre of influ­en­tial writ­ers, Churchill has been slan­dered with the label of white suprema­cist. A col­league to whom I often turn for wis­dom has a thought­ful judg­ment on this and oth­er dubi­ous accu­sa­tions. “In a con­tro­ver­sial time, an under­stand­ing of Churchill is very dif­fi­cult to achieve. That is because the life of Churchill is an impor­tant thing. And every impor­tant thing is high­ly con­tro­ver­sial today.”

Excerpt­ed from an arti­cle for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the com­plete text, click here.…

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Success
WSC with President Bowman Ashe of the University of Miami, which presented him with an honorary Doctor of Law degree, 26 February 1946.
Success: What Churchill REALLY Said

Success: What Churchill REALLY Said

Churchill said much about success in life and politics, but he is frequently misquoted. But genuine expressions also exist. Here are some of the things that he actually said, confirmed in Churchill By Himself --in chronological order, with citations. (1: “You must put your head into the lion’s mouth if the performance is to be a success.”)

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jargon
Churchill at Chartwell, early 1950s.
Churchill on Jargon: The Language as We Mangle It

Churchill on Jargon: The Language as We Mangle It

Jargon and Monkey Motion

A friend sends a let­ter from a plan­ning firm, “reach­ing out” to his home­own­ers asso­ci­a­tion. The plan­ners seek a con­sul­tant con­tract. They promise “awe­some” results. Their pro­pos­als are so full of jar­gon that my friend won­dered what Churchill would make of it. The let­ter con­tains many sen­tences Churchill would have deplored:

“The com­mit­tee tasked us with the plan­ning and com­ple­tion of an inclu­sive and pro­duc­tive process.”

“Gen­er­al under­stand­ing offers guid­ance for the imple­men­ta­tion committee.”

And: “An out­ward and hon­est mar­ket­ing posi­tion achieves awe­some goals…”

“Tasked,” of course, is a new verb, con­vert­ed from the noun “task” by mod­ern Newspeak.…

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Henry
“The Pool of England”: How Henry V Inspired Churchill’s Words

“The Pool of England”: How Henry V Inspired Churchill’s Words

Excerpt­ed from “Churchill, Shake­speare and Hen­ry V.” Lec­ture at “Churchill and the Movies,” a sem­i­nar spon­sored by the Cen­ter for Con­struc­tive Alter­na­tives, Hills­dale Col­lege, 25 March 2019. For the com­plete video, click here.

Shakespeare’s Henry: Parallels and Inspirations

Above all and first, the impor­tance of Hen­ry V is what it teach­es about lead­er­ship. “True lead­er­ship,” writes Andrew Roberts, “stirs us in a way that is deeply embed­ded in our genes and psyche.…If the under­ly­ing fac­tors of lead­er­ship have remained the same for cen­turies, can­not these lessons be learned and applied in sit­u­a­tions far removed from ancient times?”…

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Brexit
Churchill at The Hague, 7 May 1948 (in a Packard, I am proud to say): “A high and solemn responsibility rests upon us here of a Europe striving to be reborn. If we allow ourselves to be rent and disordered by pettiness and small disputes, if we fail in clarity of view or courage in action, a priceless occasion may be cast away forever.”
Brexit: Leadership Failures Over Four Generations

Brexit: Leadership Failures Over Four Generations

Quotation of the Season

So they go on in strange para­dox, decid­ed only to be unde­cid­ed, resolved to be irres­olute, adamant for drift, sol­id for flu­id­i­ty, all-pow­er­ful to be impo­tent. So we go on prepar­ing more months and years—precious, per­haps vital, to the great­ness of Britain—for the locusts to eat. —Churchill, House of Com­mons, 12 Novem­ber 1936

Brexit Bedlam

For me the most adroit analy­sis of Britain’s Brex­it Bed­lam we can read to date was by Andrew Roberts in the Sun­day Tele­graph. You can reg­is­ter for free to read the article.

Will this be the year May ends before April?…

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novelist
Novelist and Statesman: The Two Winston Churchills

Novelist and Statesman: The Two Winston Churchills

The two Churchills became aware of each other in 1900 when books by the English author began to appear alongside those of the already-well-established American. Indeed, so prominent was the American novelist at the time that English Winston wrote him a polite letter promising to use his middle name "Spencer" to distinguish himself from the far better-known American. The novelist replied that if he had a middle name he would have been pleased to return the compliment.

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Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

Churchill by Himself

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The Patriot’s Churchill

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