Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
1554
AUTHOR:
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874–1965)
QUOTATION:
Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one’s pulse and taking one’s temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.
ATTRIBUTION:
Prime Minister WINSTON CHURCHILL, speech, House of Commons, September 30, 1941.—Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963, ed. Robert Rhodes James, vol. 6, p. 6495 (1974).
