Wasn’t on Twit­ter 24 hours before encoun­ter­ing the two most pop­u­lar Churchill mis­quotes: (1) “Suc­cess is not final, fail­ure is not fatal: it is the courage to con­tin­ue that counts.” (2) “Suc­cess is the abil­i­ty to go from one fail­ure to anoth­er with no loss of enthusiasm.”

These pop up by the dozens every day; while includ­ed in some poor­ly researched quote books, nei­ther can be found among Churchill’s 50 mil­lion pub­lished books, arti­cles, speech­es and papers; and words about him by close col­leagues. They are also some­times ascribed (also with­out attri­bu­tion) to Abra­ham Lin­coln. More­over, based on edit­ing the 4000 quotes in Churchill By Him­self, I don’t believe it sounds like his prose. Click here for what he real­ly said about success—and courage.