Speech in the House of Commons against the Munich Agreement (5 October 1938)

[W]e have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and that France has suffered even more than we have... The utmost my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been able to secure by all his immense exertions, by all the great efforts and mobilisation which took place in this country, and by all the anguish and strain through which we have passed in this country, the utmost he has been able to gain...for Czechoslovakia and in the matters which were in dispute has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching his victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.

— Winston Churchill

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "[W]e have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and that France has suffered even more than we have... The utmost my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been able to secure by all his immense exertions, by all the great efforts and mobilisation which took place in this country, and by all the anguish and strain through which we have passed in this country, the utmost he has been able to gain...for Czechoslovakia and in the matters which were in dispute has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching his victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course." in the context of "Speech in the House of Commons against the Munich Agreement (5 October 1938)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Winston Churchill" (Quotes, The 1930s) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed February 05, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Winston Churchill

About Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill KG OM CH TD FRS PC (November 30, 1874 – January 24, 1965) was a British statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was a Sandhurst-educated soldier, a Nobel Prize-winning writer and historian, a prolific painter, and one of the longest-serving politicians in British history. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955, though he was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.