SOURCE: “Churchill the Phrase Forger,” in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 58, No. 2, April 1972, pp. 161-74.

In the following essay, Weidhorn examines the political rhetoric in Churchill's major speeches.

Churchill never believed in wasting a phrase.

A. J. P. Taylor

1

It is not always easy to say where originality and plagiarism diverge in political rhetoric. There is a bank of political common sense and necessary exhortations from which politicians of any persuasion periodically make withdrawals. They are not so much consciously influenced by each other as drawing independently on a common inheritance. Neville Chamberlain, bringing a piece of paper from Munich in 1938 and saying “Peace in our time,” deliberately echoed Disraeli's words on returning from the Berlin Conference of 1878, “Peace with honor,” but we cannot be certain whether De Gaulle's famous challenge, “France has lost a battle; France has not lost the war,” and Churchill's “Our task is not...