Churchill Epigrams

WinstonChurchill had a very biting wit. Some of his comebacks and snappy retorts are legendary. GeorgeBernardShaw records one. Here are a few others.

Lady Astor: "Winston, you're drunk".

Winston: "But I shall be sober in the morning and you, madam, will still be ugly. "

(It was probably not true that Churchill was drunk. While he was known for his habit of keeping a single glass of very watered-down whiskey handy throughout the day, he seldom drank to excess. He once said to his secretary: "I take a lot more out of drink that it takes out of me".)

Lady Astor (first woman MP in the House of Commons): "Mr Churchill, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your tea."

Winston (getting unsteadily to his feet): "Madam, if I were your husband ... I'd drink it."

"Don't talk to me about Naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash." -- not WinstonChurchill. See http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=112 .

Churchill grew increasingly physically frail in the last months of his long life. Near the end he was seen waiting for a friend in a corridor of the House of Commons (from which he himself had retired). He was bent double on his stick and seemed oblivious to everyone around him. Two current Tory MPs were passing and exibited all the compassion and loyalty for which that great party is noted. One said to the other, sotto voce: "They say the old chap's gone quite crazy."

Quick as a flash, Churchill was heard to mutter: "They say he can't hear as well."

Churchill's secretary once ended a sentence with a preposition in a piece she was typing. When Winston saw it he explained the problem and then said: "This is something up with which I will not put".

She had probably copied the "mistake" from his own dictation, which was notoriously difficult to follow. But I'd take it as self mockery rather than bloody mindedness. His staff seem to have genuinely loved him.

Are you sure this story is correct? The version I heard is that someone "corrected" one of Churchill's speeches to remove a preposition at the end of a sentence, and he said something like "This sort of fetish is something up with which I will not put".

This page: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/churchill.html discusses the variety of versions of this anecdote.

A bit like MarkTwain, all sorts of variations of most Churchill stories exist. This was the version I have been told but your alternative sounds equally likely. In fact, I can well imagine Winston enjoying using the same basic joke in the two (opposite) situations. He was almost certainly more interested in making people laugh than in grammatical pedantry (whether for or against). -- RichardDrake

Which reminds me of the mixture of self-confidence and playfulness his wit revealed in a far trickier, more solemn situation.

Not long into the war Neville Chamberlain died. Chamberlain had been the Prime Minister of whom Churchill - in the "wilderness years" when most people had written him off as a politician - had become bitterly critical as Chamberlain sought to appease Adolf Hitler. Churchill's warnings were ignored and the policy culminated in the notorious deal in Munich, where Chamberlain agreed to turn a blind eye to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, in clear breach of our treaty obligations under the League of Nations. The Prime Minister's "peace in our time" boast on his return was ringing pretty hollow by the time Hitler turned his attention to Poland, leading to world war and political disaster for Chamberlain.

After all this, it fell to Churchill to make the speech in the House of Commons on Chamberlain's death. As usual, he dictated it to his secretary shortly beforehand. He started something like: "There is no instinct more noble in the heart of man than the desire for peace ..." and he went on to cite bad luck and give a most generous tribute to the man who would happily have seen Churchill's own career languish on the trash heap of history if things had gone differently. When he had finished, his secretary could not contain her admiration.

"Winston, that's good ... very good."

"I know. I could of course have done it the other way around."

Can anyone explain the punch line to this dimwit? -- StephanHouben

This was from memory Stephan, so please forgive any opaqueness that was mine, if not Winston's. Churchill was indicating the obvious fact that, skilful orator that he was, he could have done a very effective character assassination of Chamberlain. He had plenty of material for that of course. The fact that he understood both the rightness and the wisdom of showing MagnanimityInVictory? was another of the man's strengths, one that was certainly not predicted by many at the time he came to power, in the teeth of almost hysteric opposition in his own party. --RichardDrake

Your politicians wrote their own speeches? --PhlIp

That one did.

Interesting. Is the decline of a nation inevitable once politicians stop writing their own speeches? Probably. Almost certainly once they lack the capability to do so.

I was about to retort that at least our politicians spoke their own speeches, referring to the fact that an actor actually delivered one of Churchill's most famous speeches over the radio. I was happy to find out that this is a myth: http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=101

See WordsThatDefineNations

His response as to whether his avowed stance to help the Russians, once attacked by the Nazis, contradicted his ardent anti-Communist bent: "Not at all. I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."

His comments on his meeting with Ibn Saud, a Muslim ruler: "A number of social problems arose. I had been told that neither smoking nor alcoholic beverages were allowed in the Royal Presence. As I was the host at luncheon I raised the matter at once, and said to the interpreter that if it was the religion of His Majesty to deprive himself of smoking and alcohol I must point out that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred right smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them."

"The hottest part of hell is reserved for those who, at a time of grave moral crisis, steadfastly maintain their neutrality."

(Said as a result of his experiences in trying to warn people of the dangers of Hitler in the 1930s.)

"When events are moving at hurricane speed and when scenes change with baffling frequency, it would be disastrous to lose that flexibility of mind in dealing with new situations... which is the essential counterpart of a consistent and unswerving purpose."

I didn't even know he had been on Wiki.