Winston Churchill Quotes (492 Quotes)

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the.

If we can stand up to Hitler, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

It is a remarkable comment on our affairs that the former prime minister of a great sovereign state should thus be received as an honorary citizen of another.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

'Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea' 'And if you were my wife, I would drink it'

No part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections.

He is like a female llama surprised in her bath.

Without courage, all other virtues lose their meaning.

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.

You may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman, or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together - what do you get The sum of their fears.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator.

Most people, sometime in their lives, stumble across truth. Most jump up, brush themselves off, and hurry on about their business as if nothing had happened.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

Socialists think profits are a vice I consider losses the real vice.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the other forms which have been tried from time to time.

Without victory there is no survival.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

History's villains are more easily recognized in retrospect. In an article published in 1935 and reprinted in 1937, Winston Churchill expressed a curious ambivalence towards the German chancellor prior to the outbreak of war We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilization will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the great Germanic nation....

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.

Don't talk to me about Naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.

It is my belief, you cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you understand the most amusing.

By being so long in the lowest form at Harrow I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys.... I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence which is a noble thing. Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English I would make them all learn English and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat.

The biggest mistake that leaders can make is to give people false hope that melts like snow.

We have sustained a defeat without a war.

Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime Ministers have never yet been invested.

The redress of the grievances of the vanquished should precede the disarmament of the victors.

A hopeful disposition is not the sole qualification to be a prophet.

The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.

Victory is the beautiful, bright-colored flower. Transport is the stem without which it could never have blossomed.

If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

He President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in harness, and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors and airmen who died side by side with ours and carrying out their tasks to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his.

There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.

I have never seen a human being who more perfectly represented the modern conception of a robot.

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.

For each and for all, as for the Royal Navy, the watchword should be, 'Carry on, and dread nought.'

I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which lead to a dark gulf.

I may be drunk madam, but in the morning I will be sober, and you will be just as ugly.

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.