“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” It is one of the most shared lines ever attached to Winston Churchill, and it is circulating again this week. The trouble is that nobody has found him saying it in those words.
The version that comes closest to a witness account is shorter. Sir Anthony Montague Browne, Churchill’s private secretary from 1952 until 1965, recalled him saying: “Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.” The International Churchill Society, which tracks what Churchill did and did not say, treats Montague Browne’s wording as the most authentic of several variants in circulation.
How a good line grows
Quotes attached to famous people tend to get polished as they travel. Someone adds the dogs, someone else adds the cats, and the punchline gets a neater rhythm with each retelling. Churchill attracts more of this than almost anyone, because he really was quick and funny, so a well-turned line sounds plausible in his voice. Researchers even have a name for the effect: Churchillian drift, where clever remarks gradually migrate to him.
One version once displayed at Chartwell, his home in Kent, ends with pigs treating us “as human beings”. The Churchill Society’s verdict on that one is blunt: it does not sound like him.
Who said it
Churchill led Britain through the Second World War as prime minister from 1940 to 1945, returned to Downing Street from 1951 to 1955, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his historical writing and speeches. Montague Browne joined him in the second premiership and stayed with him through retirement, which is why his recollections of Churchill’s private conversation carry weight.
What the line is really about
Strip away the jokes about cats and the remark is about being looked at plainly. A dog’s devotion flatters us; a pig, in Churchill’s telling, is unimpressed by status. For a man who spent decades surrounded by deference, there is something revealing in admiring an animal that simply meets your eye.
That is also why the longer version caught on. Most of us know the feeling of being looked up to or looked down on. Being treated as an equal is rarer, and nicer.
So the honest answer is that Churchill probably did say something like this, and the shorter version is the better line anyway. If you are going to share it, share the one his secretary heard: a pig “looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal”. It is worth remembering the next time someone, human or otherwise, does the same for you.
Further reading
- Winston Churchill — Wikipedia
- Anthony Montague Browne — Wikipedia
- Chartwell — Wikipedia
- Winston Churchill — Wikiquote
Image: David Hillas, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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