James C. Humes - The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill: A Treasury of More than 1000 Quotations

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James C. Humes

The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill

A TREASURY OF MORE THAN 1,000 QUOTATIONS AND ANECDOTES

WITH A FOREWORD BY

Richard M. Nixon

To Martin Gilbert,
whose epic biography etches indelibly the magnitude of Churchill .

To the International Churchill Society and its leader Richard Langworth,
for preserving the memory of Churchill .

Contents

It was my mother who first interested me in Winston Churchill. When I was five, she made me listen to some of his war broadcasts. In fact, my first trousers were a replica of a gray-belted Royal Air Force uniform. I wore proudly on my lapel an RAF pin that my mother had earned for her work for Bundles for Britain in 1940.

My mother also insisted that I accept an English-Speaking Union Exchange Scholarship to a British public school in 1952. (I had wanted to go that fall to Williams College, which my brothers had attended.) While at Stowe School, I had the chance to meet Churchill (as well as dance with the Queen), the result of which was a terminal case of Anglophilia.

In my brief meeting with Churchill in May 1953, the prime minister told me, Young man, study history, study history. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft.

I did study history, and particularly English history and Churchill. The first books on Churchill I read were gifts from my mother in 1953. They were Robert Lewis Taylors Churchill: An Informal Biography and Violet Bonham-Carters Winston Churchill . Both stimulated a college freshmans fascination with Churchill.

Yet it was my years as a White House speechwriter that prompted me to write Churchill: Speaker of the Century , published in 1980. Churchill employed no speechwriters, and that fact triggered my desire to read all of his addresses.

For that book and this one I relied on Robert Rhodes James for his eight-volume compilation of all of Churchills addresses from 1897 to 1963.

The publication of my Churchill biography led the English-Speaking Union to organize a lecture tour on my behalf.

Speeches to sixty-five branches in the United Statesas well as others in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealandestablished me as a lecturer on Churchill and brought me in contact with some of his friends and former associates.

To the English-Speaking Union, its former executive director, John Walker, and its current president, Sinclair Armstrong, and their staffs in New York and London, I owe an incalculable debt. Without the English-Speaking Union, I would not have attended a British public school, I would not have met Churchill, and I would not have become a lecturer on Churchill throughout the world. I am also indebted to my friend Kay Halle, who was in turn a friend of the Churchill family. Her Irrepressible Churchill is a must for those who seek his wit and humor. I also want to thank Eileen and Howard Lund, my English parents, whose Holywich House is close to Chartwell, which they used to take me to in my visits with them over the years.

To some it might have been a labor to read all of Churchills workshis books, his histories, his essays, and his columns. For me it was a delight. I especially recommend the reading of My Early Life for glimpses of the Churchill personality.

Other biographies, in addition to Violet Bonham-Carters, which offer valuable insights into Churchill as a person are Princess Bibescus Sir Winston Churchill, Master of Courage and the diaries of Churchills doctor, Lord Moran.

Of course, Martin Gilberts eight-volume work is the monumental biography of the most towering figure of our time. I particularly recommend that Churchill aficionados do not neglect his supplemental companion appendixes for those volumes, which are replete with nuggets of Churchill lore.

I take pride that former President Nixon offered to write the Foreword. I have had the unique experience of working, in various capacities, usually speechwriting, for Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush. Of all those leaders, Richard Nixon was the most brilliant and intellectually stimulating. In his world vision and mastery of foreign policy statecraft he comes the closest to the Churchill genius of any American president.

I also thank my editor, Stephanie Gunning, for her patience and suggestions, and my typists, Ahnee Voelker and Peg Whalen. Any errors are due to me and not to them.

Finally, I thank him who shook my hand on that May day in London and told me to study history.

Winston Churchill prophesied, made, and recorded history. In the chronicles of world events, it is difficult to think of othersbesides Churchillwho qualify for this singular distinction.

As a young subaltern, he rode in one of the last cavalry charges, in the Sudan in 1895. As a British prime minister, he was consulted when the United States launched the hydrogen bomb in 1953. He served in the cabinet in two world wars. When he first took his seat in Parliament in 1900, he took his oath to Queen Victoria. When he resigned his seat in Parliament in 1964, Lyndon Johnson was U.S. President.

The number of years Churchill served in Parliament and high office outdistances anyone in history. Yet the number of words he created and drafted as author, historian, and journalist, as well as speaker in the House of Commons and for radio addresses and public occasions, also exceed that of almost any writer in this century.

James Humes has selected from this enormous volume close to a thousand excerpts of Churchills insight and wisdom. With the voice and authority of his experience, Churchill offers invaluable and indispensable lessons.

Churchill is one of the few statesmen who occupied both the world of thought and the world of action.

Most of Churchills observations carry with them both the dimensions of actual experience and the knowledge of history.

Churchill once wrote of Prime Minister Lord Rosebery that he was a great man in an era of small events. In an era of momentous events, Churchill was a giant.

Any student of politics, aspiring world leader, or lover of history will find this wit and wisdom of Churchill both a pleasure and an education, and will come to a clearer understanding of why Churchill was the largest human being of our time.

Richard M. Nixon

Just before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in June 1953, Winston Churchill attended the Commonwealth Banquet in London. The prime minister, then in his eightieth year, was introduced to an eighteen-year-old American student. Churchill told the young man:

Study history, study historyin history lie all the secrets of statecraft.

Well, I was that young English-Speaking Union exchange scholar in London that day and I did study historyand some of that history was devoted to the study of Churchill. This represents my third Churchill-related book. In addition, I have lectured on Churchill in all fifty states and eighteen countries, including the Commonwealth nations of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Malaysia, as well as Bermuda and Hong Kong.

After I would deliver my address, at least one in the audience would take me aside and impartas if it were a special private secretthat Churchill was his or her favorite hero. Among those who confided their love of Churchill to me have been U.S. senators, Supreme Court justices, prime ministers, Cabinet secretaries and ministers both in the United States and abroad, college presidents, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, star athletes, and symphony orchestra conductors.

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