More classic churchill!!

[CollisClay]

Conversation with some Duchess of something....devonshire...winds..
Churchill is very drunk.
Duchess is not

Duchess: Sir you're drunk!

Churchill: Madame your ugly..

Duchess is shocked

Churchill: but in the morning I shall be sober.

X

[Guinivere]

Here are some more quotations by W.Churchill:

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

And he did, volumes of it. I believe he was given the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

[Virgil]

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

I never heard that one.

Here's one I like;

Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.

[pjloki]

From Big Book of anecdotes Clifton Fadiman editor. George B Shaw sent WSC 2 tickets to the premier of his Saint Joan with the advice to bring a friend "if you have one". WSC expressed his regret at not being able to attend, but promised to come the second night "if there is one."

[dafydd manton]

Some pompous individual mentione dthe "Best traditions of the Royal Navy", to which Winston is said to have replied, "The only traditions of the Navy are Rum, sodomy and the lash!" Can't imagine any Naval officers would have been too pleased at that one!

[Virgil]

I'm going to do this one from memory. It's one of those that is part of me. I hope I don't screw it up:

Never give. Never give in, never, never, never. In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

I live by that.

[blp]

Sorry to poop the party a bit, but Churchill also said this:

I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

[Virgil]

So he wasn't a saint. Who is? Big deal.

How about this classic:

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

I love the lovely balance of that sentence, the way the semi-colon works as a sort of hinge that swings the door.

[Scheherazade]

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[Virgil]

Churchill describing a precarious moment during the Boer War.

I have had, in the last four years, the advantage, if it be an advantage, of many strange and varied experiences, from which the student of realities might draw profit and instruction. But nothing was so thrilling as this: to wait and struggle among these clanging, rending iron boxes, with the repeated explosions of the shells and the artillery, the noise of the projectiles striking the cars, the hiss as they passed in the air, the grunting and puffing of the engine--poor, tortured thing, hammered by at least a dozen shells, any one of which, by penetrating the boiler, might have made an end of all--the expectation of destruction as a matter of course, the realization of powerlessness, and the alternations of hope and despair--all this for seventy minutes by the clock with only four inches of twisted iron work to make the difference between danger, captivity, and shame on the one hand--safety, freedom, and triumph on the other.

What makes this sentence is the series constructions in several places. Churchill really coud write like no politician has ever been able to do so. I guess one has to go back to Cicero for someone in the public square being among the great writers of his time.

[Emil Miller]

So he wasn't a saint. Who is? Big deal.

How about this classic:

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries"

I love the lovely balance of that sentence, the way the semi-colon works as a sort of hinge that swings the door.

Thanks for that one Virgil, it hits the nail as squarely on the head as it is humanly possible to do.