Question

“Is this quotation is attributed to Winston Churchill?: ‘The fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists.’ There does not seem to be credible information on the internet linking those words to him, but I would appreciate your input.”

A case of Churchillian Drift

Manufacturing Churchill quotes is a parlor game. Nigel Rees, host of the BBC program Quote…Unquote, described what he called “Churchillian Drift.” It’s a process whereby a quote’s originator “is elbowed to one side and replaced by someone more famous. So to Churchill or Napoleon would be ascribed what, actually, a lesser-known political figure said.” Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr.—they are all victims.

Churchill never said anything like this, according to the Churchill Project’s digital resource of 80 million published words by and about him. Churchill accounts for about 20 million (books, articles, speeches, letters, papers), including  The Churchill Documents. We also track 60 million words of biography, specialized studies, related works and memoirs by Churchill’s associates.

The fascists quotation is certainly in vogue. It’s a popular impulse to call someone with authoritarian tendencies a fascist. Attaching it to Churchill gives it credibility. Some Churchill quotation books and websites contain it—but never with solid attribution. Nearly 150 fictitious quotes are listed on this blogsite—with notes as to their origins.

Fascists and anti-fascists

Aside from the digital evidence, such a remark would be entirely out of character. Churchill didn’t use “fascist” in the generic sense—or as a pejorative against political opponents. When he did use the word, he referred to specific fascist movements. Examples: the pre-World War II Yugoslav Anti-fascist Coalition, or the postwar Italian Anti-fascist Council.

For Churchill to label a political opponent a fascist would be inconceivable. Some might think he would have said it about Clement Attlee, his socialist opposite and successor as Prime Minister in 1945. But Churchill would never think of it.

One of the striking things about The Churchill Documents, volume 22 (1945-51) is the civility of discourse. In debate, Churchill criticized Attlee fiercely and often, and these criticisms are in the volume. Several times in the House of Commons, he called Attlee’s competence into question. Yet they worked to keep channels open with each other, especially concerning the nation’s interest. Churchill would brook no generic criticism of Attlee, despite Attlee’s authoritarian impulses. On the floor they went at it hammers and tongs. Off the floor there was mutual respect.

“The Creeds of the Devil”

There is a third reason why Churchill would not have said this popular phrase. To speak in sweeping terms about “fascists” doesn’t even sound like him. It’s too pat, too simple; unnatural, unrealistic. Churchill’s views on tyrannical government were specific. They occur in a beautiful 1937 essay, “The Infernal Twins.” In it he compares Nazism with Communism, then takes pains to distinguish Italian fascism.

Nazism and Communism imagine themselves as exact opposites. They are at each other’s throats wherever they exist all over the world. They actually breed each other; for the reaction against Communism is Nazism, and beneath Nazism or Fascism Communism stirs convulsively.

Yet they are similar in all essentials. First of all, their simplicity is remarkable. You leave out God and put in the Devil; you leave out love and put in hate; and everything thereafter works quite straightforwardly and logically.

I am reminded of the North Pole and South Pole. They are at opposite ends of the earth, but if you woke up at either Pole tomorrow morning you could not tell which one it was. Perhaps there might be more penguins at one, or more Polar bears at the other; but all around would be ice and snow and the blast of a biting wind.

“Fertile fields of freedom”

Extending his geographic analogies, Churchill contrasts these totalitarian forms of government with his own and those of the great democracies:

I have made up my mind, however far I may travel, whatever countries I may see, I will not go to the Arctic or to the Antarctic regions. Give me London, give me Paris, give me New York, give me some of the beautiful capitals of the British Dominions.

Let us go somewhere where our breath is not frozen on our lips because of the Secret Police…somewhere where there are green pastures and the shade of venerable trees. Let us not wander away from the broad fertile fields of freedom into these gaunt, grim, dim, gloomy abstractions of morbid and sterile thought.

Next Churchill explains specific differences, applying the word “fascist” only to Mussolini:

There are, of course, differences between the dictatorships. Yet they are largely discounted by one significant fact. It is easy to imagine Mussolini or Hitler as head of a Communist State or Stalin as Fascist Duce or Führer. Nothing in Communism or Fascism, as we know them, or in the characters and records of these three men, makes such a situation incredible.”

It is fair to conclude Churchill took pains not to use the generic term “fascists” as an offhand dismissal of those with totalitarian ideas. He always carefully specified which fascists he meant. Of he regarded both those of the Left and the Right as equally repugnant in their denial of liberty.

Further reading

“The Creeds of the Devil” appeared in The Sunday Chronicle, London, 27 June 1937, followed by a sequel, “A Better Way,” on 4 July. The two essays combined as “The Infernal Twins” in Collier’s (USA) on 3 July 1937. Republished in Michael Wolff, ed., The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, 4 vols., (London: Library of Imperial History, 1975), II, 394-97. At the moment, only “The Creeds of the Devil” is available in digital form. Please contact me for a copy.

“Red Herrings” are part of what quotemaster Nigel Rees calls “Churchillian Drift.” (Click here for the full description.) Several other Churchill sites use my Red Herrings appendix to furnish their own lists of things Churchill never said. This is all to the good. The more who know the truth, the better for history.

Note: A complete list of Red Herrings to date is posted and regularly updated in four parts on this website. Start by clicking here.

AZ Quotes

Dozens of readers have sent email attachments from a website called AZ Quotes. They ask: “Are these accurate?” The answer: Not a lot. AZ Quotes is a serious purveyor of “Churchillian Drift.” I don’t think there is a larger batch of fake Churchillisms anywhere. This is no modest collection. To paraphrase Churchill, it has much to be modest about.

AZ doesn’t hide its goal to be quote king of the Internet: “To ensure that we have the biggest quotes collection of all (and this is true), we’re digging up books, newspapers, magazines and interviews—any source that can give us a good quote.” Indeed so! Apparently any source that can “give us a good quote” is fair game to AZ, no matter how wrong. “Digging up” is apposite.

AZ Quotes claims to care about accuracy: “…it’s an important thing for any quote and any quotes website. Every quote we add to our website we pick up manually and then check. Unfortunately, there can be mistakes: if you’ve found any such bogus quotes, report it to us immediately. Immediately, please!” Good grief, where do we start?

Castaway in Churchillian Drift

The alleged Churchill remarks posted by AZ Quotes take up (at this date) fifty-one browser pages. At about twenty-five per page, that’s roughly 1275 in all. Sporadically, attributions are provided—but not often. I would rather have an appendectomy than examine all 1275. I did look at the thirty-four most commonly sent by readers. Of these, three are fully attributable to Churchill.

To be charitable, eight are roughly approximate, but seriously muddled. Some are cobbled from different appearances, or bowdlerized out of all resemblance to Churchill’s actual words. Others are taken from other speakers. To claim Churchill said it makes a quote more interesting. AZ attaches his name to quotations from Charles de Gaulle to Cordell Hull. They must have reasoned: who cares what Cordell Hull said?

Twenty-three of these thirty-four AZ Quotes bear little or no relationship to anything Churchill uttered. They do not track in the ever-widening store of digital references compiled by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. This file includes 30 million published words by Churchill and in his Official Biography. It adds 50 million more words in books, memoirs and speeches about him. Ultimately, Hillsdale hopes to offer access to this index to students, researchers and scholars on its Churchill website.

I’ve posted my complete updated list of “Red Herrings” as a public service. It may be an antidote to what I’m reading on AZ Quotes. Arrgh! Pass the hemlock.

The Top Ten

AZ Quotes continues to add entries. They seem to post quotations willy-nilly, some perhaps sent by readers, with no attempt to verify. Some duplicate or slightly revise others. Here are the first thirty-four, in the order most often encountered. An asterisk denotes new entries for the next “Red Herrings” appendix in Churchill by Himself. “CBH” denotes current references in that book. Bold face denotes three quotations AZ Quotes actually gets right. (Stand up!)

*1. Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions. ✸ No attribution.

2. You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones to every dog that barks. ✸ From a 1923 speech, but Churchill was quoting someone else. He preceded this by saying, “As someone said…” AZ also mangles the quote. Correctly: “As someone said, you will never get to the end of your journey if you stop to shy a stone at every dog that barks” (CBH 579). 

*3. Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision. ✸ No attribution. 

4. A nation that forgets its past has no future. ✸ No attribution. Possibly muddled from “…if we open a quarrel between the past and present we shall find that we have lost the future” (18 June 1940, CBH 24).

*5. The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible. ✸ No attribution. 

* * *

6. If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart. if you’re not a conservative at forty, you have no brain. ✸ No attribution. Mangled from the usual erroneous version: If a man is not liberal in youth he has no heart. If he is not conservative when older he has no brain (CBH 576).

 7. Socialism is [the] philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. ✸ Inaccurate. The words through “envy” are from a 1948 speech (CBH 394). The rest are incorrectly transcribed from a 1945 speech (CBH 13).

8. There is nothing government can give you that it hasn’t taken from you in the first place. ✸ Inaccurate. Correctly “…Governments create nothing and have nothing to give but what they have first taken away…” (1903 Speech, CBH 393.)

9. The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. ✸ No attribution. He had far more respect for the average voter (CBH 573).

10. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. ✸ No attribution. Often credited to Lincoln, also without proof. Click here.

The Next Worst

*11. A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. ✸ No attribution and out of character for Churchill, who was not given to sexist wisecracks. (See also #30.)

 12. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. ✸ No attribution. See “Churchill on the Optimist and Pessimist.” (CBH 578.)

*13. If Britain must chose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea. ✸ Incorrect. Actually referred to choosing between de Gaulle or the Free French and Roosevelt. The correct quotation: “Each time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea. Each time I must choose between you and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt” (de Gaulle, Unity, 153). See “EU and Churchill’s Views.”

*14. One man with conviction will overwhelm a hundred who have only opinions. ✸ Not Churchill but Alfred George Gardiner, quoted by Robert Rhodes James in the introduction to Churchill’s Complete Speeches: “One man with a conviction will overwhelm a hundred who have only opinions, and Mr. Churchill always bursts into the fray with a conviction so clean, so decisive, so burning, that opposition is stampeded” (Complete Speeches vol. I, 12).

15. The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery. ✸ Inaccurate. Correctly: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” See #7 above (CBH 13).

* * *

16. However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. ✸ No attribution. See “Mr. Stern, Mr. Trump…” (CBH 580).

*17. You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. ✸ No attribution.

18. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. ✸ Not Churchill but Cordell Hull and incorrectly transcribed. Correctly: “A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.” Also, Churchill would likely have said “trousers” not pants or breeches. See “Galloping Lie” (CBH 476).

*19. Life can either be accepted or changed. If it is not accepted, it must be changed. If it cannot be changed, then it must be accepted. ✸ No attribution.

20. We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. ✸ Inaccurate. Correctly: “Can a people tax themselves into prosperity? Can a man stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle?” (1904 speech, CBH 387.

Jackpot: Three out of ten right

*21. I’d rather argue against a hundred idiots than have one agree with me. ✸ No attribution.

22. Islam is more dangerous in a man than rabies in a dog. ✸ Inaccurate. Correctly: “Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy” (CBH 464).

23. In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet. ✸ Correct! WSC once remarked: “Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened” (CBH 486).  

*24. Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut. ✸ No attribution.

25. An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. ✸ Inaccurate. Correctly: “Each one [of the neutral nations] hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last” (Broadcast, 1940, CBH 262).

* * *

26. Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they a free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage. ✸ Right again. AZ Quotes is on a roll! (CBH 99.)

27. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die: but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled— the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome. ✸ Two in a row! This gives us hope, but not for long (CBH 464).

 28. You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” ✸ No attribution, but very popular (CBH 574).

*29. I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what they do. Behavior never lies. ✸  No attribution.

*30. Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds? [Socialite: “My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course.”] Would you sleep with me for five pounds? [“What kind of a woman do you think I am?”] We’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price. ✸ No attribution. Who invents such stuff?

We shall go on to the end…

31. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” ✸ No attribution (CBH 576).

32. Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon. ✸ Roughly right but the last sentence is invented. Correctly: “Only a handful see it for what it really is—the strong and willing horse that pulls the whole cart along” (1959 speech, CBH 392).

*33. A nation that fails to honor its heroes soon will have no heroes to honor. ✸ No attribution.

*34. It is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything. ✸ No attribution.

There are fifty more pages of alleged Churchill on AZ Quotes. One day if I have nothing else to do, I will investigate further. Help, anybody!