Quotes Falsely Attributed

to Winston Churchill

Quotes Falsely Attributed

These quotes make
for good story-telling
but popular myth has
falsely attributed them
to Churchill.

"Conservative by the time you're 35"
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University makes this comment: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! and would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal.


"Cross of Lorraine"
The hardest cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine." -- This remark about the intractable Charles de Gaulle was actually made by General Spears, Churchill's envoy to France.

"Rum, sodomy and the lash"
The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash. - -- Churchill's assistant, Anthony Montague-Browne said that although Churchill had not said this, he wished he had.

"What is relevant is obviously not true"
All this contains much that is obviously true, and much that is relevant; unfortunately, what is obviously true is not relevant, and what is relevant is not obviously true. This is not by Churchill, but Churchill quoting his colleague Arthur J. Balfour (Prime Minister, July 1902 to December 1905) in his book Great Contemporaries (London & New York, 1937, last reprinted 1990). The citation is on page 250 of the first edition, in the chapter entitled "Arthur James Balfour": "...'there were some things that were true, and some things that were trite; but what was true was trite, and what was not trite was not true'..."