Politicians From England

"I bequeath my soul to God (…). My body to be buried obscurely. For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next age."

"Credulity in arts and opinions (…) is likewise of two kinds viz., when men give too much belief to arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art. The sciences that sway the imagination more than the reason are principally three viz., astrology, natural magic, and alchemy (…). Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left them gold, buried somewhere in his vineyard; while they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought many useful inventions to light."

"Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret."

"Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress."

"Nil terribile nisi ipse timor."

"Lucid intervals and happy pauses."

"Aristotle (…) a mere bond-servant to his logic, thereby rendering it contentious and well nigh useless."

"For I find that even those that have sought knowledge for itself and not for benefit, or ostentation, or any practical enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely, satisfaction, which men call truth, and not operation. For as in the courts and services of princes and states, it is a much easier matter to give satisfaction than to do the business; so in the inquiring of causes and reasons it is much easier to find out such causes as will satisfy the mind of man, and quiet objections, than such causes as will direct him and give him light to new experiences and inventions."

"Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation."

"It is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech (…) that are the true ends of knowledge (…), but it is a restitution and reinvesting, in great part, of man to the sovereignty and power, for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names, he shall again command them."

"Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for (as Virgil saith) it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be."

"Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est."

"The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power."

"Remember him, for he saved all of you: pudgy and not very large but somehow massive and indomitable; baby-faced, with snub nose, square chin, rheumy eyes on occasion given to tears; a thwarted actor's taste for clothes that would have looked ridiculous on a less splendid man. He wore the quaintest hats of anyone: tinted square bowlers; great flat sombreros squashed down on his head; naval officer's caps rendered just slightly comic by the huge cigar protruding beneath the peak. On grave and critical occasions he sported highly practical Teddy-bear suits few grown men would dare to wear in public. He fancied oil painting, at which he was good, writing, at which he was excellent, and oratory, at which he was magnificent."

"What then is the moral of Churchill's life? He was the twentieth century's great man, but we must sharply circumscribe his greatness. Because he drew the sword from the stone in 1940, what he did before and after seems admirable. Through his steadfast stance, Churchill rallied the English to die with honor—therefore they deserved to win. Whoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whoever shall lose his life shall preserve it (Luke 17:33). Yet were it not for this one courageous triumph, we might now say of him: Never had one man done so little with so much."

"He was the outlier of a new type: the first twentieth-century personality to be famous for being famous. If he toured Africa with 17 pieces of matched luggage, or got hit by a car crossing Fifth Avenue in New York, he wrote about it. His life became a forerunner of reality TV; in today's terms, he did everything to seek celebrity but release a sex tape. A great question of Churchill biography, therefore, is how this Paris Hilton of British politics became the second coming of King Arthur."

"Following the pattern set by Julius Caesar in The Gallic War, Churchill wrote books to vindicate policy; but he may also have made policy with an eye toward writing books. If so, the implications are alarming. Did Churchill conceive bold operations, such as the disastrous 1915 Dardanelles offensive, because these would make exciting episodes in the text of his life? A. J. Balfour once joked that Winston had written an enormous book about himself and called it The World Crisis. Was there more truth in that joke than we have so far known?"

"Winston Churchill led the life that many men would love to live. He survived 50 gunfights and drank 20,000 bottles of champagne. [...] And of course, by resisting Hitler, he saved Europe and perhaps the world."

"On 30 January 1965, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's funeral took place. One of its most memorable moments was when cranes on the London docks dipped as his funeral barge went past. However, it later emerged that the dockworkers had originally refused to dip the cranes as they "didn't like" Churchill, and had to be paid extra to do it. While typically depicted as a national hero today, in fact Churchill was hated by many, especially working class people, hence why he lost the 1945 election. And despite being presented as an anti-fascist, Churchill actually supported fascism. He declared that Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was "a really great man", and wrote that he "whole-heartedly" supported Mussolini "from the start of the finish in [his] triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism", and supported Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), describing the independent African nation as not "civilised". Churchill also supported the military coup of general Francisco Franco and his fascist army in Spain, and wrote of his admiration for Adolf Hitler in Germany, with whom he also advocated appeasement until late in 1938, even after Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia. In his younger days Churchill also opposed the vote being given to women, or working class men. Famously, he was a virulent racist, who supported using poison gas on civilians, and he sent troops against striking British workers. During World War II he was also a key architect of the manufactured Bengal famine, which killed between two and four million people. This clip from Jeremy Paxman's documentary discusses Churchill's funeral and includes a former docker explaining why they didn't want to lower their cranes for him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DU1qV4_t3M"

"The book is a record of perspicacity and courage on your part. England owes you many apologies."

"Tonight our nation mourns the loss of the greatest man any of us have known... It was his leadership...and that response which saved Britain and saved freedom... It was his courage, his humanity, the response he evoked in our people, that wrote in those wartime years, that imperishable chapter in our history, a chapter which will always bear the title he gave to one part of that chapter, "Our Finest Hour". For over-riding and sustaining those qualities which marked his years of leadership was his great sense of history—of, in his words, walking with destiny—thinking not so much perhaps of himself but of his country, of the Commonwealth."

"Among a stream of visitors to the 9th Division in England, while it was preparing for D-Day in the early months of 1944, was Prime Minister Winston Churchill. When he arrived to address the assembled troops, he went at first not to the speaker's stand but behind a small outbuilding. He reappeared minutes later buttoning his fly, making sure no one missed the reason for the delay. The troops loved it."

"My dear Winston. That was worth 1,000 guns & the speeches of 1,000 years."

"Winston sent me a peevish telegram to ask why Gandhi hadn't died yet! He has never answered my telegram about food."

"He is a great man. He is, of course, our enemy and has always been the enemy of Communism, but he is an enemy one must respect, an enemy one likes to have."

"As I saw and knew him his outstanding characteristics are his fearlessness, honesty, patriotism and his sense of destiny."

"Confidence in the Prime Minister stood at eighty-eight per cent in July [1940] ... There is no doubt that the British were united, nor is there the least doubt that they found in Churchill an exact expression of their own obstinacy, courage, and refusal to recognise the apparent logic of facts."

"Anyone can run up an account of Churchill and find plenty of faults. They weigh not a feather in the balance. There has never been anyone like him, and that is all there is to it. He was the saviour of his country at the most critical moment in its history."

"The saviour of his country."

"The great aristocrat, the beloved leader, the profound historian, the gifted painter, the superb politician, the lord of language, the orator, the wit—yes, and the dedicated bricklayer—behind all of them was a simple man of faith, steadfast in defeat, generous in victory, resigned in age, trusting in a loving providence, and committing his achievements and his triumphs to a higher power."

"Marshal Stalin proposed a toast to the health of the Prime Minister, whom he characterized as the bravest governmental figure in the world. He said that due in large measure to Mr. Churchill's courage and staunchness, England, when she stood alone, had divided the might of Hitlerite Germany at a time when the rest of Europe was falling flat on its face before Hitler. He said that Great Britain, under Mr. Churchill's leadership, had carried on the fight alone irrespective of existing or potential allies. The Marshal concluded that he knew of few examples in history where the courage of one man had been so important to the future history of the world. He drank a toast to Mr. Churchill, his fighting friend and a brave man."

"In contrast to the ultimate realization that he was dealing with a formidable enemy in the east, Hitler clung to the end to his preconceived opinion that the troops of the Western countries were poor fighting material... His opinions on the Western statesmen had a similar bias. He considered Churchill, as he often stated during the situation conferences, an incompetent, alcoholic demagogue. And he asserted in all seriousness that Roosevelt was not a victim of infantile paralysis but of syphilitic paralysis and was therefore mentally unsound. These opinions, too, were indications, of his flight from reality in the last years of his life."

"In their native countries, Roosevelt and Churchill are regarded as examples of wise statesmen. But we, during our jail conversations, were astonished by their constant shortsightedness and even stupidity. How could they, retreating gradually from 1941 to 1945, leave Eastern Europe without any guarantees of independence? How could they abandon the large territories of Saxony and Thuringia in return for such a ridiculous toy as the four-zoned Berlin that, moreover, was later to become their Achilles' heel? And what kind of military or political purpose did they see in giving away hundreds of thousands of armed Soviet citizens (who were unwilling to surrender, whatever the terms) for Stalin to have them killed? It is said that by doing this, that they secured the imminent participation of Stalin in the war against Japan. Already armed with the Atomic bomb, they did pay for Stalin so that he wouldn’t refuse to occupy Manchuria to help Mao Zedong to gain power in China and Kim Il Sung, to get half of Korea!… Oh, misery of political calculation! When later Mikolajczyk was expelled, when the end of Beneš and Masaryk came, Berlin was blocked, Budapest was in flames and turned silent, when ruins fumed in Korea and when the conservatives fled from Suez – didn’t really some of those who had a better memory, recall for instance the episode of giving away the Cossacks?"

"Sir Winston Churchill is the leader of the Conservative Party, but at the root of his many-sided nature there remains the essence of Liberalism. His tolerance, his sympathy with the oppressed and the underdog, his courage in withstanding clamour, his belief in the value of the individual and in self-government for communities sufficiently advanced to use it wisely, all derive from a heart and a head which made him in his early years of Ministerial office a Liberal statesman... Now that the ex-Liberal Minister has become leader of the Conservative Party, has he not carried into that body the reinvigorating spirit of English liberalism and so brought to fulfilment his father's notion that Toryism could be led into democratic channels? The content of national policy changes with time, but there is a profound sense in which Sir Winston Churchill, though a Conservative Prime Minister, is a Liberal still."

"[H]is ideas are to me reactionary, he is out of touch with modern social trends. But he has served his country with the highest distinction; in moments of peril he was undaunted; in majestic phrases, which linger in the memory of those who heard them, he crystallised the resolution of the whole nation."

"As we were leaving the House [of Commons] late tonight, he called me into the Chamber to take a last look round. All was darkness except a ring of faint light all around under the gallery. We could dimly see the table, but walls and roof were invisible. "Look at it", he said. "This little place is what makes the difference between us and Germany. It is in virtue of this that we shall muddle through to success & for lack of this Germany's brilliant efficiency leads her to final disaster. This little room is the shrine of the world's liberties.""

"Early in the afternoon [of 8 September 1940] I accompanied the Prime Minister on a tour of the East End, and then I saw the extraordinary spirit with which Londoners fought back... Although it was still early in the afternoon people were already coming in for the night, carrying their bedding and belongings, but they dropped them to the ground to cheer the Prime Minister. Putting his hat on the end of his stick he twirled it round and roared, "Are we downhearted?" and they shouted back, "No!" with astonishing gusto. "Hit 'em back, Winston!" the East Enders cried. "Hit 'em hard!" "Never fear," he answered in his most most bulldog way, "we'll hit back as soon as we can." Pessimists had predicted panic and bitterness in the East End, but I saw nothing of the kind. Smiles, cheers and grim determination showed already that "London could take it"."

"Even repeated by the announcer, it sent shivers (not of fear) down my spine. I think that one of the reasons why one is stirred by his Elizabethan phrases is that one feels the whole massive backing of power and resolve behind them, like a great fortress: they are never words for words' sake."

"[H]e became the greatest leader in war this country has ever had."

"An analogous process I shall call Churchillian Drift ... Whereas quotations with an apothegmatic feel are normally ascribed to Shaw, those with a more grandiose or belligerent tone are, as if by osmosis, credited to Churchill."

"[re Mulberry Harbours] You know that was Churchill’s idea. He has a hundred a day and about four of them are good."

"It is fun to be in the same decade with you."

"There is a great longing for leadership and even those who are far apart from you in general politics realize that you are the one man who has combined full realization of the dangers of our military position with belief in collective international action against aggression. And if we fail again now, will there ever be another chance."

"One of the reasons for the immense popularity of Churchill in 1940 was the not unfounded instinct of the common people that, but for him, their rulers would have betrayed them. There is a certain fallacy in attempting to decide what was Churchill's one crucial contribution to the survival of Britain. Great historical events are determined by a whole array of causes, each of which would be entitled in isolation to be regarded as crucial. But I feel sure that many people besides myself believe it was by being an immovable obstacle to compromise or surrender in 1940 that Churchill saved his country."

"His violent disagreement with Neville Chamberlain did not spring solely from thwarted ambition or personal dislike. Such motives may have sharpened the phrases and honed his epigrams, but the long policy of appeasement, the weakening of Britain's world role, the acceptance of oppression and racialism were to Churchill a denial of England's historical destiny and, because a denial, bound to end in disaster."

"He looked invincible, which he is. Tough, bulldogged, piercing. He made his way through the smoke, through the City workers all crying "Good old Winston" – "Give 'em socks" – "Good luck" – and the culminating cry of "Are we down-hearted?" to the heaven-rising response of "No-o-o-o-o" which echoed around the City, around the world indeed. It was magnificent, tremendous, stirring, dramatic."

"War not only has its own weapons, it has its own ethic, its own standard of right and wrong... Do whatever is necessary to win. This fact was emphasized in a recent statement by Winston S. Churchill, former first lord of the British admiralty: "When all is over, torture and cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian states had been able to deny themselves: and these were of doubtful utility.""

"[T]he political reminiscences which he has published...have always been a great deal above the average, in frankness as well as literary quality... Churchill's writings are more like those of a human being than of a public figure... Whether or not 1940 was anyone else's finest hour, it was certainly Churchill's... [O]ne has to admire in him not only his courage but also a certain largeness and geniality which comes out even in formal memoirs of this type... The British people have generally rejected his policies, but they have always had a liking for him, as one can see from the tone of the stories told about him... At the time of the Dunkirk evacuation...it was rumoured that what he actually said, when recording the speech for broadcast, was: "We will fight on the beaches, we will fight in the streets... We'll throw bottles at the b—s; it's about all we've got left"—but, of course the BBC's switch-censor pressed his thumb on the key at the right moment. One may assume that this story is untrue, but at the time it was felt that it ought to be true. It was a fitting tribute from ordinary people to the tough and humorous old man whom they would not accept as a peace-time leader but whom in the moment of disaster they felt to be representative of themselves."

"The man who rallied the nation was Churchill, a gifted and courageous man, but a patriot of the limited, traditional kind. In effect Churchill said simply, "We are fighting for England," and the people flocked to follow him... I personally have always admired him as a man and as a writer, little as I like his politics."

"Churchill had the mind of an historian and the courage of a solider. First, Churchill could see the patterns of the past being repeated in the present, and second, he had no fear of risking political death by going against the polls or conventional wisdom."