Lincoln Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Churchillian (or Yogi Berra) Drift: How Quotations are Invented

31 January 2013 Comments 4 Comments

Drift it is….

Churchillian Drift is just the ticket. I have been looking for a term to describe the numerous potted, inaccurate Churchill quotes. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth puts its trousers on.” That is big right now on Twitter. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Everybody uses that one repeatedly.

“If you’e going through hell, keep going.” No one knows who said that, but it wasn’t Churchill. Then there is: “If I were your husband, I’d drink it.”…

Jack French Kemp 1935-2009

21 May 2009 Comments 2 Comments

“DASH OF GREYHOUND, SLIPPING THONGS…”

On Eleuthera, where we live from December to April, there was vast fascination, as one might expect, in the recent U.S. Presidential election. One of the virtues of this Bahamas island far out in the Atlantic is that racism, in the sense we all know it in the so-called First World, doesn’t really exist. On our easy-going tropical strand, amid the smiles of welcoming locals and old friends who have known each other for years, it just doesn’t seem to matter whether the face in front of you is black or white.…