How popular history distorts Churchill’s “never give up” speech
He didn’t say or mean it that way
5 min readFeb 2, 2019
You probably heard about the famously short commencement speech supposedly given by Winston Churchill, in which he said:
“Never give up, never give up, never give up.”
According to the story, the courageous, eccentric, cigar-chomping British prime minister — the man who had the guts to stare down Hitler and save the world from Nazi domination — uttered these words, lowered his heavy frame and sat down, speech completed.
The general public perceives it as one of the most concise and memorable speeches in history. It has become an inspirational rallying cry — along with Vince Lombardi’s “winners never quit” slogan (which, as I show in this story, is false because Lombardi himself quit several times).
