Quotations Archives - Page 8 of 31 - Richard M. Langworth

Winston Churchill in “Peaky Blinders” and On the Art of Sleep

20 July 2022 Comments 0 Comments

Given the differences in ages, Maskell's makeup and mannerisms are excellent. Close-ups are better than full figure shots. Unfortunately the scriptwriter didn't consult the right experts. For example, Churchill wouldn't have lorded over Tommy Shelby for being lesser born than he. That simply was not Churchill's style. Nor did he regard Oswald Mosley as a serious a threat as "Peaky Blinders" makes him.

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“Twelve million feathers on his wings, 16,000 lenses in his eye, a mouthful for a bird.” Indian butterflies. (Kailash Kumbhkar, Creative Commons)

Churchillisms: Twelve Million Feathers on a Butterfly’s Wings

30 June 2022 Comments 0 Comments

Churchill was a keen collector of butterflies in India, but in later life he couldn't bear to kill them or even keep them captive in his chrysalis house at Chartwell. Strolling by the cage on one of his walks, he left the screening open. Secretary Grace Hamblin asked, did he do that on purpose. Churchill replied, "I can't bear this captivity any longer."

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Churchill’s “Democracy is the Worst Form of Government…”

20 June 2022 Comments 3 Comments

"At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper—no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point."

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The Queen 70 Years On: “A Sparkling Presence at its Summit”

15 May 2022 Comments 0 Comments

"Our Island no longer holds the same authority or power that it did in the days of Queen Victoria. A vast world towers up around it and after all our victories we could not claim the rank we hold were it not for the respect for our character and good sense...and I regard it as the most direct mark of God's favour we have ever received in my long life that the whole structure of our new-formed Commonwealth has been linked and illuminated by a sparkling presence at its summit." —WSC, 1955

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law — Statue of Moses at Kloster Raitenhaslach, Burghausen, Germany. (Schorle, Wikimedia Creative Commons)

Winston Churchill’s Great Law Givers of History

10 May 2022 Comments 1 Comment

Churchill's view never altered. Moses he was "the supreme Law Giver, who received from God that remarkable code upon which the religious, moral, and social life of the nation was so securely founded. Tradition lastly ascribed to him the authorship of the whole Pentateuch, and the mystery that surrounded his death added to his prestige."

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alcohol — “Drunken Weltanschauung: Churchill tries to find luck in drink, but the bottle distorts the view.” (Der Stürmer, Nuremberg, 26 February 1942)

“Drunk and Ugly”: The Perennial Quotation-Chase

5 May 2022 Comments 1 Comment

"Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and what’s more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly." Lady Soames, who said her father was always gallant to women, doubted the exchange, but bodyguard Ronald Golding was present and heard it. Golding explained that WSC was not drunk, just tired and wobbly, which caused him to fire the W.C. Fields riposte.

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Safeguarding the Arts: Churchill Quotes and Misquotes

30 April 2022 Comments 0 Comments

"The Arts are essential to any complete national life.... Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due" (Churchill, April 1938). "No, bury them in caves and cellars. None must go. We are going to beat them" (Churchill, June 1940).

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Evans — At Harrow School in 1891, Churchill had a vision fifty years ahead. (Bernard Burns, Creative Commons)

Churchill Clairvoyant, 1891: Confidence or Realism?

26 April 2022 Comments 0 Comments

It was a summer's evening, Sir Murland Evans recalled, "in one of those dreadful basement rooms in the Head Master's House, a Sunday, to be exact, after chapel evensong. We frankly discussed our futures." What came next was a stunner....

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Fantasies: Trollope’s Brittanula, Churchill’s Battle of Gettysburg

11 April 2022 Comments 0 Comments

1930: Kaiser Wilhelm II may today occupy "the most splendid situation in Europe." But "let him not forget that he might well have found himself eating the bitter bread of exile, a dethroned sovereign and a broken man loaded with unutterable reproach...if Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg."

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Martin on Churchill: No One Left Without Feeling a Braver Man

31 March 2022 Comments 0 Comments

In May 1940 Stanley Bruce argued for a peace settlement with Hitler. Churchill struck out this paragraph, and wrote in the margin: “No.” Next, Bruce wrote that “the further shedding of blood and the continuance of hideous suffering is unnecessary.” Churchill wrote: “Rot."

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