
“Beware the wolf in sheep's clothing.”
The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
“Beware the wolf in sheep's clothing.”
The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
“A sheep in sheep's clothing.”
On Ramsay MacDonald. This is often taken as referring to Clement Attlee, but Scottish historian D. W. Brogan is cited in Safire’s Political Dictionary (2008), William Safire, Oxford University Press US, p. 352 ISBN 0195343344 as follows: ‘Sir Winston Churchill never said of Clement Attlee that he was a sheep in sheep’s clothing. I have this on the excellent authority of Sir Winston himself. The phrase was totally inapplicable to Mr. Attlee. It was applicable, and applied, to J. Ramsay MacDonald, a very different kind of Labour leader.’
Early career years (1898–1929)
“A sheep in sheep's clothing.”
Edmund Gosse, quoted in Ferris Greenslet Under the Bridge: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943) p. 104.
Sometimes misattributed to Yeats.
Criticism
“A sheep in sheep's clothing.”
Of T. Sturge Moore, c. 1906
Quoted in Ferris Greenslet, Under the Bridge, ch.12.
On Democracy (6 October 1884)
Context: The framers of the American Constitution were far from wishing or intending to found a democracy in the strict sense of the word, though, as was inevitable, every expansion of the scheme of government they elaborated has been in a democratical direction. But this has been generally the slow result of growth, and not the sudden innovation of theory; in fact, they had a profound disbelief in theory, and knew better than to commit the folly of breaking with the past. They were not seduced by the French fallacy that a new system of government could be ordered like a new suit of clothes. They would as soon have thought of ordering a new suit of flesh and skin. It is only on the roaring loom of time that the stuff is woven for such a vesture of their thought and experience as they were meditating. They recognized fully the value of tradition and habit as the great allies of permanence and stability. They all had that distaste for innovation which belonged to their race, and many of them a distrust of human nature derived from their creed.
“Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security.”
Morrison v. Olsen, 487 U.S. 654, 699 (1988) (dissenting).
1980s
referring to the Anglican Primate of South Africa, Archibishop Winston Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town