“We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest number of words into the smallest amount of thought.”

A jibe directed at Ramsay MacDonald, during a speech in the House of Commons, March 23, 1933 "European Situation" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1933/mar/23/european-situation#column_544. This quote is similar to a remark (“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met”) made by Abraham Lincoln. [Frederick Trevor Hill credits Lincoln with this remark in Lincoln the Lawyer (1906), adding that ‘History has considerately sheltered the identity of the victim’.]
The 1930s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest number of words into the smallest amo…" by Winston S. Churchill?
Winston S. Churchill photo
Winston S. Churchill 601
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1874–1965

Related quotes

Abraham Lincoln photo

“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Attributed in Lincoln the Lawyer (1906) by Frederick Trevor Hill — Hill noted that he could find no record of whom Lincoln was insulting.
Posthumous attributions

David Cross photo

“The South has more of a disproportionate amount of irony on T-shirts than any other region in the country.”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

Shut Up, You Fucking Baby

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in psychology. It is the word "maladjusted."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Certainly we all want to live the well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But I must honestly say to you tonight my friends that there are some things in our world, there are some things in our nation to which I'm proud to be maladjusted, to which I call upon all men of goodwill to be maladjusted until the good society is realized. I must honestly say to you that I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism and the self defeating effects of physical violence.
1960s, Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

“An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)
Henry Ford photo
C.G. Jung photo

“If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man—but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 41e

Joan Didion photo

“…when General Eisenhower defined an intellectual as “a man who takes more words than is necessary to tell more than he knows”, he was speaking not as a Republican but as an American.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Intellectual in America”, p. 5
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Donald Barthelme photo

Related topics