Ron DeSantis announced his campaign's end with a Winston Churchill quote — but Churchill never said it

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Sunday that he was suspending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he posted a quote on X and attributed it to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts," the quote read.

There was just one problem: Churchill never said that.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

- Winston Churchill pic.twitter.com/ECoR8YeiMm

— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) January 21, 2024

"Winston Churchill has become something of the king of fake quotes — a phenomenon the Internet has pushed to the extreme," said the Winston Churchill Project at Michigan's Hillsdale College, which counted the quote DeSantis used among two examples of "aspirational phrases" wrongly attributed to Churchill.

Similarly, the International Churchill Society says they can find "no attribution" of this quote to Churchill, adding that this quote is incorrectly yet "broadly attributed to Churchill."

The society also says that a nearly equal number of online sources credit Abraham Lincoln with the saying, but that they have "found none that provides any attribution in the Lincoln Archives."

In 2013, the Churchill Society published a response to a column in the Atlanta Journal Constitution that also incorrectly attributed the quote to Churchill. 

"We base this on careful research in the canon of fifty million words by and about Churchill, including all of his books, articles, speeches and papers," said the Society of their conclusion.

CBS News has reached out to the DeSantis campaign, but has yet to hear back.

In:
• Politics
• Republican Party
• Ron DeSantis
• Winston Churchill

C Mandler

C Mandler is a social media producer and trending topics writer for CBS News, focusing on American politics and LGBTQ+ issues.