"The condition of affairs in China constitutes an enigma which it will require all the wisdom of the most experienced diplomats to unriddle."
In a radio broadcast on October 1, 1939, Churchill delivered his classic: "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
War against Germany was declared on September 3 by prime minister Neville Chamberlain after Germany invaded Poland. The Soviet Union marched into Poland soon after.
Churchill — brilliant writer, speaker and wit — may not have been as original as we like to think. Enigmas and riddles had perhaps often danced together.
Still, Churchill, with trademark flourish, added that third step: "mystery".
Churchill’s line is so famous that pop culture can’t resist riffing on it. In Star Trek: Voyager, the Doctor calls the Vulcan brain "a puzzle wrapped inside an enigma housed inside a cranium".
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This sent Civis musing on our originality — and on AI. Where do writing ideas come from?
Does everything we’ve seen, read and heard swirl in our subconscious soup? Do the fragments mix, match and reform into something new?
Ideas build on ideas. Add a mystery to an enigma and a riddle, and suddenly you have something fresh.
We blend old ideas, fold in experience, and out pops the result.
AI large language models do much the same — only on a colossal scale, churning through oceans of online material.
Are we just miniature, low-powered AIs with a dash of personal know-how added?
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Churchill’s quotations are for the ages, and many are neither enigmatic nor mysterious.
Alongside his rousing wartime speeches — beaches, battles, and "never... was so much owed by so many to so few" — his wit could be devastating.
These two may be apocryphal, but they’re too good to omit.
"I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly." And Lady Astor to Churchill: "If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee." His reply: "If I were married to you, I’d drink it."
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United States President Donald Trump has often compared himself to Churchill and has a bust of the wartime leader in the Oval Office.
For all Churchill’s faults and questionable attitudes, one imagines he would be dismayed by Trump’s approach to democratic norms, his impact on global stability, his affinities for authoritarian leaders and his mangling of the English language.
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Civis asked AI Copilot for a made-up quote in the Churchill style. It spat this out: "Courage is not the roar that fills the hall, but the quiet resolve that keeps a nation standing when the hall has fallen silent".
And a humorous one in the Churchill vein with a twinkle in his eye: "I have always found that those who insist they are unquestionably right are usually the ones I would least trust to assemble a deckchair".
ChatGPT’s turn: It describes this as having Churchillian cadence and bite: "Courage is not the absence of doubt, but the decision, taken repeatedly and often grimly, that doubt shall not be allowed to govern events".
Several original "humorous" fake quotes were also immediately produced on request. For example: "I have learned that optimism is best taken neat, pessimism watered down, and certainty avoided altogether".
Given how we and AI work, what is originality and what is not?
