| Quote |
Origin |
Misattribution |
Ref |
|---|
| Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash. |
Resembles an ironic aphorism cited by Langworth from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as 19th-century English naval tradition, "Ashore it's wine, women and song; aboard it's rum, bum and concertina" or variously "... rum, bum and bacca [tobacco]". |
Winston Churchill |
[2][3] |
| The heaviest cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine. |
This remark referring to Charles de Gaulle was actually made by General Edward Louis Spears, Churchill's personal representative to the Free French. |
Winston Churchill |
Quoted in Nigel Rees, Sayings of the Century p. 105. |
| Lady Nancy Astor: If I were your wife I'd put poison in your coffee.
Churchill: If I were your husband I'd drink it. |
Dates to 1899, American humor origin, originally featuring a woman upset by a man's cigar smoking. Cigar often removed in later versions, coffee added in 1900. Incorrectly attributed in Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, Glitter and Gold (1952). |
Winston Churchill |
- "If you were my husband, I'd poison your coffee" (Nancy Astor to Churchill?), Barry Popik, The Big Apple, February 9, 2009
- 19 November 1899, Gazette-Telegraph (CO), "Tales of the Town," p. 7
- Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations, by Richard Langworth, PublicAffairs, 2008, p. 578.
- The Yale Book of Quotations, edited by Fred R. Shapiro, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 155.
- George Thayer, The Washington Post (April 27, 1971), p. B6.
|
| If you're going through hell, keep going. |
True origin unknown. Finest Hour described it as "not verifiable in any of the 50 million published words by and about him". A similar quotation: "If you're going through hell, don't stop!" is "plausibly attributed" to Oregon self-help author and counselor Douglas Bloch (1990), according to Quote Investigator. |
Winston Churchill |
[4][5][6] |
| Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm |
Attribution debunked in Langworth's Churchill by Himself. The earliest close match located by the Quote Investigator is from the 1953 book How to Say a Few Words by David Guy Powers. |
Winston Churchill |
[7] |
| Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends |
Recorded as a toast dating to at least the nineteenth century. |
Francis Bacon, Tom Waits |
[8] |
