Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak;
courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
- Winston Churchill, 1874-1965, British statesman, orator
Image source: WinstonChurchill.org
A short biography at NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize 1953 in Literature
Cigar Afficionado's profile of Churchill, A Gentleman of History In War or Peace, Winston Churchill's Cigars Were Never Far from His Hand, include this story:
Throughout most of Churchill's political career, he was inseparable from his cigars. And he went to great lengths to make certain that he would not have to abstain needlessly, even for short periods. On one occasion, while serving as prime minister during the Second World War, he was to take his first high-altitude airplane flight in an unpressurized cabin. According to biographer Gilbert, when Churchill went to the airfield on the evening before the flight to be fitted for a flight suit and an oxygen mask, he conferred with the flight expert who was to accompany him on the journey and requested that a special oxygen mask be devised so that he could smoke his cigars while airborne. The request was granted, and the next day Churchill was happily puffing away at 15,000 feet through a special hole in his oxygen mask.
For those of you that doubt Churchill's greatness, here's a link to Thinking Churchill, Part I by Ralph Raico in LewRockwell.com. The banner proclaims A
definitive debunking of the Churchill myth in five parts. It opens:
When, in a very few years, the pundits start to pontificate on the great question: "Who was the Man of the Century?" there is little doubt that they will reach virtually instant consensus. Inevitably, the answer will be: Winston Churchill. Indeed, Professor Harry Jaffa has already informed us that Churchill was not only the Man of the Twentieth Century, but the Man of Many Centuries.
In a way, Churchill as Man of the Century will be appropriate. This has been the century of the State of the rise and hyper-trophic growth of the welfare warfare state and Churchill was from first to last a Man of the State, of the welfare state and of the warfare state. War, of course, was his lifelong passion; and, as an admiring historian has written: "Among his other claims to fame, Winston Churchill ranks as one of the founders of the welfare state." Thus, while Churchill never had a principle he did not in the end betray, this does not mean that there was no slant to his actions, no systematic bias. There was, and that bias was towards lowering the barriers to state power.
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