"Keep Buggering On"

The British government created a motivational poster in 1939 to raise the morale of the British public in preparation for Great Britain's entry into World War II.  Even though more than 2.5 million posters were printed, very few were actually displayed in public.  The poster was re-discovered in 2000 at a secondhand book shop in Alnwick, Northumberland called Barter Books.  You've probably seen it before:

As I learned from the excellent biography of Winston Churchill by the British historian and writer Andrew Roberts (Churchill: Walking with Destiny), Churchill had his own version of this saying, "Keep Buggering On" ("KBO").  There is another story in the biography that I found incredibly interesting.  Apparently, Churchill summarized his feelings on Russia joining World War II on the Allied side in a letter to the Swedish Ambassador, Bjorn Prytz using his own version of Aesop's Fables:

There lived two frogs, an optimist and a pessimist.  One evening they were jumping over some grass and detected the wonderful smell of fresh milk emanating from a nearby dairy.  The frogs were tempted and jumped into a large jar of milk.  What to do?

The pessimist looked around and, seeing that the walls of the jar were high and sheer and that it was not possible to climb up, fell into despair.  He turned on his back, folded his legs and sank to the bottom.  

The optimist did not want to perish so disgracefully.  He also saw the high and sheer walls, but decided to flounder while he could.  All night long he swam, beat the milk energetically with his legs, and displayed various forms of activity...By the time morning came, the optimistic frog had, quite unawares, churned a big knob of butter out of the milk and thereby saved his life.  The same will happen to the British Empire.

So what should we learn from this story?  When confronted with a challenge, I choose to be like the optimistic frog (and Churchill).  KBO, Keep Buggering On.