9 of history's best quotes

History Extra

Queen Victoria, who reportedly said "We are not amused". (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Neil Armstrong: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”

 

On 20 July 1969, as Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon, he marked the momentous event with this iconic statement. 

 

After jumping more than three feet down from his spacecraft Apollo 11 onto the moon’s surface and issuing his immortal words, Armstrong explored the moon’s surface for two-and-a-half hours along with fellow American astronaut Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin. The pair made their mark by planting an American flag and a plaque that read, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind".

 

Interestingly, though, the words uttered by Armstrong in that historic moment are in fact a misquote. After a safe journey home Armstrong told the press that what he had actually said – or intended to – was, “That’s one small step for a man”. The indefinite article was lost over the crackling audio connection – a small omission that led to a significant change in the quote’s meaning. Armstrong acknowledged this, saying that “The ‘a’ was intended. I thought I said it”. Yet since the misquote had already been repeated the world over, Armstrong was forced to concede “I can’t hear it when I listen on the radio reception here on earth, so I’ll be happy if you just put it in parentheses”.

 

^{American astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon as commander of the Apollo 11 lunar mission. (MPI/Getty Images)}

 

Marie Antoinette: “Let them eat cake!”

 

According to popular legend, this flippant remark was Marie Antoinette’s response to being told that the French people were starving and they could not afford bread. The quote, widely attributed to her, has become a symbol of the callous decadence of France’s monarchy on the eve of the French Revolution (1789–99).

 

Antoinette was famed for her extravagant lifestyle, and her exclamation of “Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" (which actually translates more literally to ‘let them eat brioche’ or a enriched, egg-based bread) was seen as damning mockery of the plight of her people. 

 

It is now generally accepted, though, that Antoinette most likely never uttered these famous words. Instead they are thought to have been attributed to her by revolutionary propaganda keen to portray her as ignorant, distant and uncaring. Writing for History Revealed magazine, Emily Brand has suggested that the expression in fact pre-dates Antoinette. It is first referenced as the words “of a great princess” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1766 treatise Confessions, written when Antoinette was only 11 years old. Brand argues the saying was only linked to Antoinette 50 years after her execution in 1793. 

 

But while this quote may not in reality have been uttered by Antoinette, the phrase had sticking power because of the popular perception, whether justified or not, of the French queen as outrageously extravagant and insensitive to the struggles of her people.

 

^{Marie Antoinette in a 1775 portrait by Jean-Baptiste Gautier Dagoty. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)}
 

Winston Churchill: “We shall fight on the beaches… we shall never surrender”

 

Over the course of his political career, Winston Churchill delivered many iconic speeches in the face of war and hardship. From “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” (1940) to “An iron curtain has descended across the continent” (1946), Churchill has been recognised as one of history’s most inspiring speakers.

 

Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches” quote was part of a grave yet rousing speech given by the prime minister in the aftermath the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation. Churchill’s words were arguably fundamental in transforming the event in the popular imagination from a humiliating defeat into a miraculous triumph of bravery and determination. Indeed, Churchill’s words – which are often misquoted as “we shall fight them on the beaches” – have been immortalised as an example of Britain’s plucky ‘Blitz spirit’ in the face of adversity.

 

A frequently misremembered fact about the “We shall fight on the beaches” speech is that Churchill did not originally read it out over the nation’s airwaves. He delivered the speech unrecorded to the House of Commons and sections of it were later read out by a BBC radio announcer. The famous recording we recognise today was not actually made until nine years later in 1949, when it was thought that Churchill's words should be set down for posterity. 

 

^{Churchill delivering his “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech over BBC radio in 1940. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)}

 

Queen Victoria: “We are not amused”

 

The story goes that this famous line was Queen Victoria’s retort to a risqué anecdote told by a tactless guest at a Windsor dinner party. In this version of events the “we” is intended, not as the royal “we”, but as a reference to all the ladies present who were unimpressed by such vulgar behaviour. Disappointingly, though, it is not clear whether this story stems from historical fact or just appealing urban legend. 

 

“We are not amused” has perhaps had such sticking power because it is emblematic of the public image of Victoria in her later years – a po-faced, dumpy woman dressed in black. The quote fits neatly with this straitlaced portrayal of her and also provides a handy epithet for popular ideas about Victorian society being stuffy and uptight.

 

The association of Victoria with the humourless quote arguably portrays the monarch in an unfair light. Writing for the Washington Post, historian Kate Williams has suggested that “dour” photos of Victoria, (the first photographed monarch) – taken before people learned how to pose – “unfairly colour our view of her”. Williams claims that Victoria was “full of passion for life, forgiving of moral peccadilloes” and “always loved laughter and jokes”. She was, in fact, often amused.

 

^{A photograph of Queen Victoria c1887. (Alexander Bassano/Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)}

 

Julius Caesar: “I came, I saw, I conquered”

 

Translated from the Latin “Veni, Vidi, Vici”, this line is attributed to Roman emperor Julius Caesar, who supposedly used it to boast of his military success.

 

According to ancient accounts, Caesar sent the three-word message to Rome in 47 BC to report on his victory over Pharnaces II of Pontus in the battle of Zela. Despite being significantly outnumbered at Zela, Caesar managed to crush the Pontic forces. His five-day campaign proved a swift, decisive victory that saw Pharnaces subdued by Caesar’s military might. 

 

According to Roman historian Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars (AD 121) the “Veni, Vidi, Vici” slogan was also inscribed on placards during the ‘Pontic triumph’ – a public procession in celebration of Caesar’s return to Rome following his military victory.

 

In his Life of Caesar, Greek biographer Plutarch (c46–120 AD) writes that “In Latin the words have the same inflectional ending, and so a brevity which is most impressive”.  

 

^{Bust of Julius Caesar. (National Museum in Naples/Bettman/Getty)}

 

FDR: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”

 

These famous words were spoken during Franklin D Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, delivered at the United States Capitol, Washington DC on 4 March 1933. Following an election victory over republican Herbert Hoover in 1932, Roosevelt became the 32nd president of the United States. Known as ‘FDR’, he went on to become the first president to serve a total of four terms. 

 

Elected during the depths of America’s Great Depression, Roosevelt made his 20-minute address a solemn and resolved affair. It tackled head-on the nation’s economic crisis and unemployment, blaming the “callous and selfish wrongdoing” of bankers and businessmen. This quote, which goes on to describe “fear itself” as the “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed effort to convert retreat into advance” appeared near the very beginning of Roosevelt’s address. Contemporaries understood it as a pointed attack on the damaged and pessimistic American mindset of the time, which had been dealt a heavy blow by the economic crash.

 

Broadcast to tens of millions of Americans over national radio networks, FDR’s speech was generally accepted as a dynamic and inspiring promise to get America back on track. 

 

^{President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his first inaugural address at the Capitol in 1933. (George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images)}

 

Oscar Wilde: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”

 

This remark, from Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, is just one example of reams of quotable material from the celebrated writer, conversationalist and wit. 

 

Wilde’s comic plays made a satire of the contradictions and petty manners of polite Victorian society. Works including The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) and An Ideal Husband (1895) are full of the wry observances and witty aphorisms for which Wilde is best known. Dozens of his phrases, including “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”; “Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much” and “I have nothing to declare but my genius” have proven enduringly popular.

 

In 2007 Wilde was voted Britain’s greatest wit in a poll of more than 3,000 comedy fans, beating to the top spot Spike Milligan, Winston Churchill and Noel Coward. The Irish-born Wilde was wisecracking until the very end, reportedly quipping on his Parisian deathbed in November 1900, “Either those curtains go, or I do”.

 

^{Colourised photograph of Oscar Wilde from around 1870. (Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images)}

 

Queen Elizabeth I:  “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too”

 

This assertion of royal power from Elizabeth I was part of a rousing speech delivered by the queen in one of England’s darkest moments, as the nation faced the threat of imminent attack from the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth’s rallying cry was intended to motivate the English troops assembled at Tilbury in August 1588 as they awaited the arrival of an unprecedented Spanish invasion force. Through her words the queen clearly portrayed herself as a warrior ready to fight for her nation.

 

Accounts portray Elizabeth addressing her troops atop a white steed, wearing a helmet and cutlass. Despite the threat to her safety, the queen allegedly refused to return to London, instead resolving to stay at the English army camp at Tilbury. She reportedly declared that she would “not think of deserting her army at a time of danger”. 

 

Writing for History Extra in 2015, Robert Hutchinson revealed that although the speech elsewhere pledges that “shortly we shall have a famous victory over these enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people’’, in reality it was probably not delivered in a moment of imminent danger. Hutchinson suggests that Elizabeth’s stirring words only reached her men after the Armada was already in retreat. The words were recorded by royal courtier Lionel Sharp and later repeated to the army.

 

^{Elizabeth I of England is depicted riding a horse as she reviews her troops at Tilbury, c1560. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)}

 

Eleanor Roosevelt: “Women are like teabags – you don’t know how strong they are until you put them in hot water” 

 

While her husband, Franklin D Roosevelt, was serving as US president between 1933 and 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt redefined the role of first lady through her active engagement in politics. An outspoken social campaigner and early ambassador of the United Nations, Eleanor was also engaged in human rights work, playing a significant role in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

 

Many inspirational quotes have been attributed to Eleanor, including “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”; “Do one thing every day that scares you” and “It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself”.


 

Her “Women are like teabags” quote seems to draw on several older variations of the idea, including “A man is like an egg, the longer he is kept in hot water the harder he is when taken out”, which appeared in an 1858 Boston newspaper, and “Men are like potatoes; they do not know how soon they may be in hot water”, from an 1870 Dublin newspaper.

 

While there is little concrete evidence that Eleanor spoke the original quote, it is now widely attributed to her. The adage is reportedly a favourite of presidential candidate Hilary Clinton, who herself recently ascribed it to Eleanor.

 

^{Eleanor Roosevelt listening through headphones during a UN conference in New York. (Keystone/Getty Images)}

7 things that happened in March through history

History Extra
Submitted by: Dominic Sandbrook

Thomas Cranmer thrusts his hand into the flames that would soon burn him alive in this woodcut from John Foxe’s 1563 Book of Martyrs. © Bridgeman

11 March AD 222: Rome’s emperor of excess meets a bloody end

Even in the lurid parade of Roman emperors, Elagabalus stands out. Born into the imperial Severan dynasty in c203 AD, he found himself catapulted to supreme power in his early teens and soon began to court controversy.
To the horror of the Roman elite, their teenage emperor – whose real name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus – had signed up to the cult of the Syrian sun god Elagabalus, after whom he now named himself. Once emperor, he renamed his god Deus Sol Invictus – God the Undefeated Sun – and installed him at the head of the Roman pantheon. Then he declared himself high priest, had himself publicly circumcised and made the city’s bigwigs watch while he danced around the Sun’s new altar.

_{A contemporary sculpture of Elagabalus, an emperor known for his excesses. © AKG}
In the meantime, Elagabalus’s sexual conduct was raising eyebrows across the city. In total he married and divorced five women, but his chief relationships seem to have been with his chariot-driver, a male slave called Hierocles, and an athlete from Asia Minor called Zoticus. According to gossip, the emperor “set aside a room in the palace and there committed his indecencies, always standing nude at the door of the room, as the harlots do… while in a soft and melting voice he solicited the passers-by”. If any doctor could give him female genitalia, he said, he would give him a fortune.
Eventually, the Praetorian Guard, sick of their emperor’s excesses, switched their allegiance to his cousin Severus Alexander and turned on Elagabalus.
As the historian Cassius Dio recorded, there was no mercy for either Elagabalus or his mother: “Their heads were cut off and their bodies, after being stripped naked, were first dragged all over the city, and then the mother’s body was cast aside somewhere or other while his was thrown into the river.”

31 March 1889: France’s iconic tower opens

The Eiffel Tower had a troubled birth. Conceived by engineers Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier as the centrepiece of the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, it was built by the celebrated bridge-maker Gustave Eiffel, who claimed it would celebrate “not only the art of the modern engineer, but also the century of Industry and Science in which we are living, and for which the way was prepared by the great scientific movement of the 18th century and by the Revolution of 1789”.
Most of the French intellectual establishment hated the idea. It would be “useless and monstrous”, a “hateful column of bolted sheet metal”, claimed a petition signed by some 300 writers and artists. But Eiffel was having none of it, even comparing his new structure to the pyramids of Egypt. “My tower will be the tallest edifice ever erected by man,” he wrote. “Will it not also be grandiose in its way? And why would something admirable in Egypt become hideous and ridiculous in Paris?”

_{A poster advertising reduced train tickets to the Exposition Universelle of 1889. The Eiffel Tower was the crowning glory  of the exhibition, but the first visitors needed to be fit: on its opening, none of the lifts were working. © Bridgeman}
In fact, when the tower was finally opened to the government and press on 31 March 1889, it was not quite finished. Crucially, the lifts were not yet working, so the visiting party had to trudge up the stairs on foot. Most gave up and remained on the lower levels; only a handful made it to the top, where Eiffel hoisted a gigantic French flag, greeted by fireworks and a 21-gun salute.
The tower was an instant hit: illuminated every night by gas lamps, it dominated not just the Exposition, but Paris itself. When the public were finally allowed in, the lifts were still not working. Yet in the first week alone, almost 30,000 people climbed to the top – a sign of how completely it had caught the world’s imagination.

5 March 1946: Churchill warns of an ‘iron curtain’ falling across Europe

In the spring of 1946, Winston Churchill arrived in Fulton, Missouri. The little Midwestern town seemed an unlikely destination for the man who, until the previous summer, had been leading the world’s largest empire. But Churchill, rejected by the British electorate, was in the doldrums. When President Harry Truman invited him to give a lecture at a little college in his home state, Churchill saw it as a chance to revive his American reputation.
Churchill and Truman travelled to Fulton by train and on the way the president read a draft of the former prime minister’s talk. It was, he declared, excellent. But when Churchill stood up on 5 March, in the packed gymnasium at Westminster College, few could have expected that his words would resound in history.

_{Winston Churchill delivers his speech alongside President Harry Truman in Fulton, Missouri. His words herald  a new era of Cold War across Europe and an end to good relations with the Soviet Union. © Getty}
A shadow, he explained, had fallen “upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory” – thanks entirely to Stalin’s Soviet Union. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” he declared, “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” That made Anglo-American co-operation all the more important. Theirs, Churchill added, was a “special relationship”.
Churchill was not the first man to use the words ‘iron curtain’, but he was unquestionably the most famous. After that day in Fulton, there was no doubt that the alliance between Stalin’s Soviet Union and the two great western powers was over – and that the Cold War had begun.

21 March 1556: Thomas Cranmer burns at the stake

By the early 1550s, Thomas Cranmer had a good claim to be one of the most influential men in English history.
As archbishop of Canterbury, he had laid the foundations for the new Church of England, attacking monasticism and the doctrine of the Mass, compiling the Book of Common Prayer and establishing the king, not the pope, as head of the church. But when the Catholic Mary succeeded her brother, young Edward VI in 1553, Cranmer was in trouble. Arrested that autumn, he publicly recanted in an attempt to save his skin. But it was no good. Even though he had abjured all his Protestant views, Mary wanted him to burn.
On 21 March 1556, the day scheduled for his execution, Cranmer was ordered to make a final recantation at the University Church in Oxford. He wrote out his text and submitted it to the authorities. But then, once in the pulpit, he did something quite extraordinary. Unexpectedly abandoning his text, Cranmer withdrew all that he had “written for fear of death, and to save my life”.
“And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart,” he added, “therefore my hand shall first be punished: for if I may come to the fire, it shall be first burned. And as for the pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine.”
By now the place was in uproar. Guards dragged Cranmer from the pulpit to the spot at St Giles where other martyrs had been burned. And there, “apparently insensible of pain”, this exceptionally courageous man met his end, plunging his right hand into the flames first, as he had promised. His last words were a cry almost of exaltation: “I see the heavens open, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”

Expert comment - Dr Linda Porter:
For the beleaguered Protestants of Mary I’s England, the burning at the stake of Thomas Cranmer must have seemed a moment of both despair and triumph. They had lost their spiritual leader and yet the drama surrounding his death denied Catholicism a victory.
Uncertainty, even ambiguity, had long been present in Cranmer’s own life. He pronounced the end of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, yet could not save Anne Boleyn. He was present at the king’s deathbed, exhorting him to put his trust in Christ, although Henry had continued to hear Mass throughout his reign.
As mentor to both Katherine Parr and Edward VI, Cranmer encouraged religious reform, but was willing to deny it all rather than be burned alive. His sisters, one Catholic, the other Protestant, fought for his soul in 1556. It was then that he discovered that the agonies of indecision, of abjuring the work of a lifetime, were worse than the ordeal in the flames. Cranmer chose to follow his beliefs in the most dramatic way, by unexpectedly upholding them with superb timing and oratory on the day of his death.
Thomas Cromwell may be the Tudor man of the moment, but it is to Cranmer that we owe the liturgy of the Church of England. His 1552 prayer book remains one of the glories of the English language.  In its beauty, we can still know this complex and deeply learned man.
Dr Linda Porter is the author of three books on the Tudor period. She is currently writing a book about the children of Charles I and the Civil War.

Three other notable March anniversaries

19 March 1649
Having executed Charles I, the House of Commons passes an act abolishing the House of Lords, which it calls “useless and dangerous to the people of England”.

23 March 1801
In St Petersburg, Tsar Paul I is attacked by disgruntled Russian officers, who strike him down with a sword before strangling and stamping him to death.

29 March 1461
At Towton in Yorkshire, Edward IV leads the Yorkists to victory over the Lancastrian army – led by the Duke of Somerset – in the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil.

Dominic Sandbrook recently presented Tomorrow’s Worlds: The Unearthly History of Science Fiction on BBC Two.