Success Is Not Final Failure Is

This quote is not Churchill's. Neither the International Churchill Society, the Churchill Project at Hillsdale College, nor the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge has found any evidence he ever said or wrote it. Quote Investigator traced the earliest close match to a 1938 Budweiser print advertisement. The phenomenon of inspirational sayings migrating to Churchill's name is so common that scholar Nigel Rees coined the term "Churchillian Drift" to describe it. Ron DeSantis famously used this line to close his 2024 presidential campaign; fact-checkers rated the attribution false.