January 22, 2024

Things not said by Winston Churchill.



The Daily Beast is pretty snarky about it:
The Ron DeSantis large language model appeared to hallucinate on Sunday, with the campaign running an apparently fake Winston Churchill quote as the title of the candidate’s drop-out announcement video....

Winston Churchill tends to get statements misattributed to him. His name on a statement is already a red flag that it might be a mistake. Please check first, especially if you are going to use one of these quotes in an important statement, as Ron DeSantis did.

Here's the Wikiquote page for Churchill. It's really long. It includes a section labeled "Misattributed." That section is really long too. Long, but entertaining. For example, Churchill did not say "A joke is a very serious thing." It's actually a line written by Charles Churchill — in 1763 poem called "The Ghost."

53 comments:

AZ Bob said...

Let me be the first to say, let them eat cake.

Yancey Ward said...

It is a little known fact that Churchill's original version of "We shall fight them on the beaches" speech to the House of Commons was "We are fucked".

AlbertAnonymous said...

Also, quoting Wikipedia as a source is not recommended (except maybe by Caludine Gay, former Harvard President).

Mr. Majestyk said...

Well, at least he attributed the quote to someone. A nice contrast to serial plagerist Joe Biden.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

DeSantis is an excellent communicator. Sharp and focused.
If you want to hear Trump - just watch the SNL skit mocking him. It's spot on.

That we've come to a point where Crook Biden and dick-stepping Trump are choices - is just sad.

Americans say they don't want either - but it appears we do want them. The old fart cage match.
One old fart is corrupt, operates above the law, and is protected by the Putin press (Biden) and the other, while superior on economics, often breaks promises and surrounds himself with the wrong people... and manages on non-stop motion as his own worst enemy.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

He said "Winston Churchill once remarked"

re Pete said...

"I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by

Things I never meant nor wished to say"

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Like Winston Churchill said, “I’ve never said half of the things I said.”

link to quote origins


n.n said...

DeSantis Appears to Misattribute a Quote to Churchill as He Drops Out of Primary
- NYT

FINEST HOUR 136, AUTUMN 2007
"We base this on careful research in the canon of fifty million words by and about Churchill, including all of his books, articles, speeches and papers."

Hope Springs (no pun intended) eternal. Perhaps an AI would be more confident.

rehajm said...

How do you know he never said it?

Dude1394 said...

Desnatis did the corret thing, especially vocally supporting Trump. The democrat lawfare just cannot stand if we actually want to keep the republic.

rehajm said...

…and sorry NYT, I’m not going to allow that to disqualify him from the Presidency. You’re being sooo 1990s…

RigelDog said...

Mis-attributed quotes drive me crazy! How can you be active on the interwebs and not have realized years ago that most alleged quotes by famous people are not legit?? And it's so easy to check for accuracy.

Moreover, apparently only .00015 percent of the population have any historical or literary education because most of these fake quotes sound phony. This "Churchill" quote uses language with a modern and an American feel---the sentiment behind the quote is plausible, but not the words themselves.

Yancey Ward said...

"It was never easy for me. I was born a poor black child. I remember the days sitting on the porch with my family, singing and dancing down in Mississippi."

-Joe Biden

Iman said...

The Daily Yeast with their usual, half-baked bullshit take.

I am not impressed.

RigelDog said...

I Stand With Israel (etc) notes: "One old fart is corrupt, operates above the law, and is protected by the Putin press (Biden) and the other, while superior on economics, often breaks promises and surrounds himself with the wrong people... and manages on non-stop motion as his own worst enemy."

You live in my head---and yes, Hamas and all terrorists can suck it.

Steven Wilson said...

A fellow named Richard Langworth is someone who has devoted a great deal of time, effort and scholarship to determining exactly what Churchill did and didn't say. Although things are often misattributed, Churchill did say a lot of things that are worth repeating.

Original Mike said...

I want to read a biography of Churchill, but I've only got the time for one. The Althouse commentariat seems like just the group to ask for recommendations.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Here is someone attempting to oust Diana DeGette(D installed until death congress goon)

Mr. Archutela states clearly how Americans claim to despise congress... yet vote over and over for the hated incumbents.

Too bad we are unable to get out of our own way.

Meade said...

"A joke is a very serious thing." It's actually a line written by Charles Churchill — in 1763 poem called "The Ghost."

Perhaps. But we all know the originator of that quote: Yogi Berra.

Chris-2-4 said...

It's always fun to see journalists (and other largely-illiterate folks) who have probably never heard of the quote, pile on about someone misattributing it to the person most people misattribute it to.

Misattributing it is at least a sign of literacy higher than what those folks have achieved.

*Disclaimer that it was probably a speechwriter and not DeSantis himself who was literate enough at least to misattribute.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

The real Einstein quote was close to the opposite of the paraphrase. As far as Einstein could see, there was no room for either natural predictability or unnatural miracles. The MLK paraphrase was much better. The Churchill quote is a great summary of his words and actions. "Churchill's life and words have been well summarized by these words: ..."

Meade said...

“Small minds discuss people like Eleanor Roosevelt; average minds discuss events; great minds discuss great baseball players like Yogi Berra”
—Meade 1960

Temujin said...

The Daily Beast 'journo' couldn't carry Ron DeSantis's jock strap.

That's a half use of a quote by Yogi Berra. Or was it Leonard Bernstein?

PS- Ron DeSantis has a long and fine memory. He's not going away.

Steven Wilson said...

Andrew Roberts's Churchill: Walking with Destiny is a very recent and very good biography. I've probably burned through half a dozen biographies of the man and as many other books which are about various aspects of his life and career.

Larry Arrn's Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government is a more specialized work that melds Churchill's personal and political philosophy with the events of his life and his government service.

The Roberts book is better as pure biography, but the Arrn book emphasizes that their was a philosophical underpinning to Churchill's political life.

Meade said...

“Why? Why why why?”

—Neil Kinnock

Mr. O. Possum said...

There was a novelist named Winston Churchill who, like his UK compatriot, also toured the country giving speeches. The two were often confused, so much so that I heard the former president of Dartmouth, which is in NH, give a speech in which he recounted the British Winston's visit to campus...something that never happened.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The quote “Love thy neighbor, but carry a big stick” is often attributed to TR. I have it in solid authority however that it is a misquotation, a mishmash if you will.

Someone took Mr Roger’s “Love thy Neighbor” and pasted it next to Babe Ruth’s “Carry a big stick”.

It’s really unfortunate when that happens.

Mr. T. said...

Oh it's misattributed because Woke-I mean, "wiki"pedia and the "IstandwithJackie" Daily Beast.

Even if the Churchill quote is misattributed, doesn't mean we should believe that because gutter trash antifa sources say so.

rehajm said...

Blogger Meade said...
“Why? Why why why?”

—Neil Kinnock


Nancy Kerrigan!

Quaestor said...

The misattributed quote turns out to be advertising copy from a Budweiser magazine ad circa 1938, proving one important truth: Anheuser-Busch has been selling anything other than beer for a long, long time.

robother said...

" The voters have spoken, God damn them" (Moe Udall) would have scored more points with me.

Drago said...

"Pass the Sweet And Sour sauce, the Port Wine and scrub the internet of my fake quotes"
---Winston Churchill...probably

Quaestor said...

What puzzles me is why politicians feel the need to quote Winston Churchill, especially conservatives. Most Democrats are either doctrinaire fascists or Marxists. Still, they don't go around quoting Das Kapital or Mussolini, mostly out of complete ignorance of the literature, but at least they respect their inabilities and steer clear of unchartered waters. Before he became Il Duce, Mussolini was a widely-ready socialist intellectual, but in Italian only. Marx, on the other hand, was the second-worst writer in the German language since the publication of Luther's Bible. Whenever a left-winger quotes Karl Marx, he cites The Communist Manifesto, not realizing he's quoting Friedrich Engels.

CJinPA said...

Mark Twain, to Winston Churchill, quoting Abraham Lincoln, as overheard by Albert Einstein, once said...

Rabel said...

He didn't continue courageously. He quit.

He did the right thing, however late, to avoid a devastating single-digit showing in NH.

The fake quote doesn't fit with his decision.

Leland said...

Considering Churchill's disaster at Gallipoli; I can't imagine him ever suggesting failure is not fatal.

Original Mike said...

Thanks, Steven Wilson!

Rich said...

"The problem with quotes on the internet is that they are often fake." - Abraham Lincoln

Or my personal favorite: “I said a lot of things I never said” ~ Yogi Berra

n.n said...

Google steers us to the correct answer in its summary under the heading Churchill quotations.

8. Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.

Next time use another search engine.

hombre said...

Misquote or not DeSantis was the best of the bunch. The GOPe label hung on him by the Trumpsters was bullshit.

n.n said...

The ethics of the story is to search Google a googol times before relying on the engine's results. What other sources of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and conflation passes muster in the mainstream environment?

n.n said...

Both NYT and a Churchill-focused blog hedge their bets by claiming the quote attributed to Churchill cannot be substantiated. Google seems more confident in its summary, with an affirmative link to a site attributing the quote to Churchill in his "finest hour". 50 shades of Gay? Perhaps.

mikee said...

"Choose your quotes not just wisely but with attribution beyond reproach." mikee

Lenin's writings, on the other hand, were "compiled" so exhaustively (i.e., written by others, as needed by the Party, both before and long after Lenin died) that any Lenin quote is just as real as most other Lenin quotes. Same for Mao, beyond that little red book that has some real zingers in it but is undoubtedly 100% real CCP Mao ingredients.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Now we watch as we get a repeat of 2020.

How many mules? how many Zucker-boxes and 3 am drops... How long to count the ballots until the correct outcome is managed?

weee.

MadisonMan said...

Is it my fault that people haven't read Churchill's poem if I say "A joke is a very serious thing" as said by Churchill and they think I'm claiming that one Winston Churchill said it?

Steven Wilson said...

The failure at Gallipoli was not Churchill's alone. An argument could be made that the timidity of the naval commander doomed the expedition. Many of the Turkish forts were nearly out of ammunition and the ships lost had hit mines. Timidity on the part of army commander also ensured the assault would turn into a stagnant trench warfare like the western front. And it wasn't Churchill who doubled down and continued to pour resources on a stalled effort. The essential elements were surprise and audacity and both were abandoned.

This campaign was why Churchill when he became Prime Minister also took on the mantle of Defense Minister as well. He was not going be held responsible for that which he had no control. He had his share of failures in life, but Gallipoli was really not his worst.

Prof. M. Drout said...

"The more profound the quotation seems, the more likely it was not said by the person to whom it is attributed."

——Aristotle of Ghent

Kevin said...

What puzzles me is why politicians feel the need to quote Winston Churchill, especially conservatives.

With all the plagiarism going on, it's better to mis-cite someone than to let people attack you for not citing a source.

Unless you're Joe Biden, of course. Then you just cite your word as a Biden.

RMc said...

Winston Churchill tends to get statements misattributed to him.

Yogi Berra, too.

Mutaman said...

I stand w Isreal. Leftists, Mullahs, Hamas-Palistinian terrorists can suck it said...

"DeSantis is an excellent communicator. Sharp and focused. "

He's particularly sharp and focused when he's dipping his fingers into the old pudding.

Rusty said...

'Things not said by Winston Churchill"
Pull my finger

Goju said...

Like Winston Churchill said, “I’ve never said half of the things I said.”
I have seen this also attributed to Twain and Will Rogers.