Tag: Stresa Conference

“Remember the past”: Santayana, but never Churchill

“Remember the past”: Santayana, but never Churchill

I am a librar­i­an and I have a patron who inquired about famous quote by George San­tayana (in The Life of Rea­son, 1905): “Those who can­not remem­ber the past are con­demned to repeat it.” We know the quote was orig­i­nal­ly Santayana’s, but our patron would like to know when Mr. Churchill first used it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, my col­league and I have not been able to locate the the time or con­text of quote as it relates to Mr. Churchill. —D.J., New York

I searched Churchill’s 15 mil­lion pub­lished words (books, arti­cles, speech­es, pri­vate papers) but could find no occur­rence of Santayana’s remark.…

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9/11/12: Ambassador Murdered, Consulate Burned

9/11/12: Ambassador Murdered, Consulate Burned

Over the last forty-eight hours I have been asked for the same two Churchill quo­ta­tions by sev­er­al per­sons in the news media or in pol­i­tics. The quo­ta­tions are in my book, Churchill By Him­self, new­ly pub­lished as Churchill in His Own Words:

“Lead­er­ship” chap­ter, page 490, “Iner­tia”:

When the sit­u­a­tion was man­age­able it was neglect­ed, and now that it is thor­ough­ly out of hand we apply too late the reme­dies which then might have effect­ed a cure. There is noth­ing new in the sto­ry. It is as old as the  Sibylline books. It falls into that long, dis­mal cat­a­logue of the fruit­less­ness of expe­ri­ence and the con­firmed unteach­a­bil­i­ty of mankind.…

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