Stresa Conference Archives - Richard M. Langworth

“Remember the past”: Santayana, but never Churchill

5 October 2012 Comments 0 Comments

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.…

9/11/12: Ambassador Murdered, Consulate Burned

13 September 2012 Comments 0 Comments

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.…