History Will Be Kind To Me

The popular version of this quote — "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it" — is a paraphrase of what Churchill actually said. His real words, spoken in the House of Commons in January 1948 in response to criticism of pre-war Conservative foreign policy, were: "I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself." The wittier, pithier version circulated later and has become one of the most widely spread Churchill misquotes online. He did indeed write the history: his six-volume memoir The Second World War won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.