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Who really said it

Any Time You See Anything Big and Working Well, You Want To Take It Over

Not Winston Churchill — an unverified anecdote, first traced to 1958 Unknown Unverified anecdote · earliest known record 22 December 1958
Disputed In copyright

There is no contemporary record of Churchill saying this. The earliest trace Quote Investigator ↗ found is a private letter of 22 December 1958 from Dean Acheson to Felix Frankfurter, and even that is third-hand: Acheson had it from the journalists Scotty Reston and Stewart Alsop, who were relaying a story told by Hubert Humphrey. In that version the target is Clement Attlee and the wording is different — “whenever you see a means of production in good working order you want to nationalize it”. The wording on this page first appears in 1965, in the broadcasting executive Harry Bannister’s memoir, where the man at the other end of the washroom is not Attlee but the Labour politician Emanuel Shinwell. The Churchill quotation scholar Richard M. Langworth places the anecdote in the “Red Herrings: False Attributions” appendix of Churchill By Himself and gives the verdict “Apocryphal Churchill”.

Last verified 1 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Any Time You See Anything Big and Working Well, You Want To Take It Over” Not verified as Winston Churchill. The House of Commons washroom anecdote has no contemporary record: the earliest trace is a third-hand letter from Dean Acheson dated 22 December 1958, and this wording first appears in Harry Bannister’s memoir The Education of a Broadcaster (1965), where the other man is Emanuel Shinwell rather than Clement Attlee. Churchill scholar Richard M. Langworth files it under "Red Herrings: False Attributions" — verdict: apocryphal Churchill. · Verbatim: “I don’t take chances, Mannie. I know you. Any time you see anything big and working well, you want to take it over.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Winston Churchill. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Simon and Schuster (publisher of the 1965 book quoted above)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the themes of power and leadership. Theme: "Any Time You See Anything Big and Working Well, You Want To Take It Over". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Any Time You See Anything Big and Working Well, You Want To Take It Over". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Earliest known record
Dean Acheson to Felix Frankfurter, letter of 22 December 1958
How Acheson got it
Third-hand — from Reston and Alsop, relaying Hubert Humphrey
This wording first appears
Harry Bannister, The Education of a Broadcaster (1965), page 279
Expert verdict
“Apocryphal Churchill” — Richard M. Langworth, Churchill By Himself

One time Shinwell was in the men’s room of the House of Commons when Churchill entered. There was no one else there, but Churchill walked right by Shinwell to the farthest end. “I say, Winnie,” said Shinwell, “I hope there’s nothing personal between us.” And Churchill replied, “I don’t take chances, Mannie. I know you. Any time you see anything big and working well, you want to take it over.” Harry Bannister, The Education of a Broadcaster, 1965

The earliest appearance of this particular wording, and the version in which the other man is Emanuel Shinwell. Modern retellings almost always substitute Clement Attlee, following the older and differently-worded 1958 letter.

Quote Investigator — the 1958 to 2013 chain

How we verified this

  • The earliest instance is a letter of 22 December 1958 from Dean Acheson to Felix Frankfurter, printed in Among Friends: Personal Letters of Dean Acheson (1980). Acheson was not a witness: he had the story from Reston and Alsop, who had it from Hubert Humphrey, and his version ends “whenever you see a means of production in good working order you want to nationalize it” the 1958 letter ↗.
  • The wording quoted on this page appears in 1965, in Harry Bannister’s The Education of a Broadcaster, with Emanuel Shinwell in Attlee’s place the 1965 citation ↗.
  • The story then keeps changing. A 1979 trade journal has Attlee and “the moment you see anything big you want to nationalise it”; a 1980 Citibank newsletter replaces the washroom with a bar and a cigar, and calls the tale apocryphal in its own preface; William Manchester printed a version in 1983 whose footnote credits Sir David Pitblado, who told it to him in 1980 the later variants ↗.
  • Richard M. Langworth’s Churchill By Himself, the standard compilation, puts the anecdote in an appendix titled “Red Herrings: False Attributions”, dates the alleged remark circa 1948, notes it is “Recorded by Manchester and others, but not attributed”, and rules: “Apocryphal Churchill” Langworth’s verdict ↗.
In copyright

Quote sparingly and attribute. The passage reproduced above is from Harry Bannister’s The Education of a Broadcaster, published by Simon and Schuster in 1965 — long after the 1930 cut-off for the United States public domain — and remains in copyright, as do the 1958 Acheson letter as published in 1980, Manchester’s 1983 biography and Langworth’s compilation. Because the remark is not Churchill’s, the separate question of his estate’s rights does not arise. This is not legal advice.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The attribution problem

Nobody who told this story was in the room. The chain of transmission is unusually well documented, and every link in it is somebody repeating somebody else.

Winston Churchill no source

No contemporary record, no Hansard entry, no diary. The alleged exchange is dated to the 1940s and the earliest known account is from 1958, reaching its writer through three intermediaries the 1958 letter ↗.

Richard M. Langworth documented

The editor of Churchill By Himself, the standard compilation of what Churchill actually said, places this in the appendix “Red Herrings: False Attributions” and rules it “Apocryphal Churchill” the entry ↗.

Attlee or Shinwell drifted

The 1958 letter and most modern retellings name Clement Attlee; the 1965 memoir that carries this exact wording names Emanuel Shinwell. A story whose second character changes is a story being retold from memory both versions ↗.

Nationalise, or take over later variant

The oldest version is about a “means of production in good working order” and uses “nationalize”. The looser “anything big and working well … take it over” is the 1965 form; a 1980 telling drops the washroom altogether for a bar and a cigar the variants ↗.

An unverified anecdote with no witness: earliest record a third-hand letter of December 1958, and “Apocryphal Churchill” in Langworth’s standard compilation the evidence ↗.

Context

Why it survives anyway

The joke is good, the politics are legible, and the setting is indecent enough to be memorable — which is also the standard defence of its authenticity, that a story too coarse to print would have travelled by word of mouth and left no paper trail. Quote Investigator raises that possibility fairly and then declines to lean on it, because an absence of evidence explained by an absence of evidence is not evidence.

What can be established is the shape of the thing: an anecdote that surfaces a decade or more after the event it describes, in a private letter, having passed through three tellers, and which then acquires a new second character, a new punchline and eventually a new location. That is the natural history of an invented story, not a remembered one.

Three tellers before it reached paper, and they could not agree who Churchill was talking to.

The chain of tellers

Alleged event: the House of Commons washroom, some time in the 1940s. Langworth dates the supposed remark circa 1948.

22 December 1958: Dean Acheson writes it to Felix Frankfurter, having had it from Reston and Alsop, who had it from Hubert Humphrey. Attlee; “means of production in good working order”.

1965: Harry Bannister prints the wording on this page, with Emanuel Shinwell instead of Attlee.

1979: a building-services trade journal runs an Attlee version — “the moment you see anything big you want to nationalise it”.

1980: a Citibank newsletter moves the scene to a bar and a cigar, and calls the story apocryphal in its own introduction.

1983: William Manchester includes it; his footnote credits Sir David Pitblado, who told it to him in 1980.

Langworth’s Churchill By Himself: filed under Red Herrings: False Attributions. Verdict, apocryphal.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Power Leadership

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Any Time You See Anything Big and Working Well, You Want To Take It Overquoteinvestigator.com

The full chain from the third-hand 1958 Acheson letter through the 1965, 1979, 1980 and 1983 variants to Langworth’s apocryphal verdict.
Winston Churchill — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s sourced, disputed and misattributed sections for Churchill — the standard first stop when checking a line pinned on him. This particular anecdote is not among its entries.
Churchillian Driften.wikipedia.org

The named phenomenon this page is an instance of: unattributed witticisms migrating to the most famous plausible speaker.
Winston Churchillen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the statesman the anecdote is pinned on, with his dates and offices.

Popularly credited author

Why it gets pinned on Churchill

Winston Churchill

1874–1965 · British statesman, historian and Nobel laureate in Literature

Sir Winston Churchill attracts orphaned wit so reliably that the tendency has its own name — Churchillian drift. This anecdote is a particularly comfortable fit: it needs a Conservative with a gift for the crushing aside and a Labour front-bencher to aim it at, and mid-century Britain offered no better candidate. What it has never had is a witness. Every telling reaches us through at least one intermediary, and the intermediaries do not agree on who the other man was.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The earliest documented instance (Chicago)

Bannister, Harry. The Education of a Broadcaster, 279. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965. Earlier and differently worded: Dean Acheson to Felix Frankfurter, 22 December 1958, in Among Friends: Personal Letters of Dean Acheson, edited by David S. McLellan and David C. Acheson, 153. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1980.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Any Time You See Anything Big and Working Well, You Want To Take It Over’?” Last verified 1 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/any-time-you-see-anything-big-and-working-well-you-want-to/

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