Winston Churchill Quotes
The first lesson that you must learn is that, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.
Winston Churchill, 1874-1965, British Prime Minister (Conservative), Instruction to his staff assistant, Iain Macleod, 1945
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The Prime Minister was visiting the United States and was staying at the White House. President Roosevelt had a spontaneous thought and wheeled himself into Churchill's room. The Prime Minister was stark naked, having just emerged from the bath. Roosevelt apologized but Churchill was unfazed and known for his nudity in his private quarters. He even used what might have been an awkward moment into an opportunity to make a political point.
In a democracy, some politicians come to power in good or average times. Others, come to power with the nation in extremis. Churchill. Privately confided to a friend that he was not exactly happy. However, he had served as Prime Minister before and under the even more difficult conditions of WWII. In American, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Barack Obama all came to power when the nation was in great difficulty. In Lincoln’s case, there was secession and rebellion. With FDR it was the Great Depression. In Obama’s case, there were two wars and the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, yet all 3 men did not seem to have Churchill’s misgivings.
1st Earl of Beaconsfield
In the British Constitutional Monarchy of the Victorian Era, the Queen still possessed enormous power and many in Parliament was constantly trying to have Parliament assume many of the Queen’s powers. The Prime Minister was in an awkward position. On the one hand, he was the Queen’s Prime Minister and leader of HER government. At the same time he was the leader of the political party that had won the last Parliamentary election. His party was trying to usurp some of the Queen’s powers and Peel explained to the Queen’s assistant that he would generally side with the Queen against his own party. It is doubtful that Anson and the Queen believed Peel on this point as his position as Prime Minister depended not on his being elected by the voters but by his party members of Parliament. In modern times, the British monarch has few real powers but is still very influential so there are no struggles over power with Parliament.
When Disraeli first entered politics and tried to run for Parliament the notion that he would ever become Prime Minister was very unrealistic to everyone except Disraeli. In addition to no political experience at the time, he came from a Jewish background at a time when anti-Semitism was very common and acceptable to England. Even if he were not inexperienced and Jewish, he was not part of the British aristocracy and was not socially connected. He also had no large business and industrial connections and no important family connections. However, he was a marvelous writer and speaker, a very fast learner, and turned out to be a political natural. Most historians rate him as one of the two or three greatest British Prime Ministers.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, DL, FRS, RA was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, Churchill was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, as leader from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924. Churchill was also well known for his military career and as a historian, painter and writer, and among his many awards was the Nobel Prize in Literature.
