Winston Churchill Quotes (492 Quotes)

Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine, which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces.... So now this bloodthirsty guttersnipe must launch his mechanized armies upon new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation.

We get to make a living we give to make a life.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

To gain one's way is no escape from the responsibility for an inferior solution.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Dead birds don't fall out of their nests.

The maxim of the British people is 'Business as usual.'

This is no time to speak of the hopes of the future, or the broader world which lies beyond our struggles and our victory. We have to win that world for our children. We have to win it by our sacrifices. We have not won it yet. The crisis is upon us.... In this strange, terrible world war there is a place for everyone, man and woman, old and young, hale and halt service in a thousand forms is open. There is no room now for the dilettante, the weakling, for the shirker, or the sluggard. The mine, the factory, the dockyard, the salt sea waves, the fields to till, the home, the hospital, the chair of the scientist, the pulpit of the preacher from the highest to the humblest tasks, all are of equal honor all have their part to play.

The British Empire and the United States will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage. For my own part, looking out upon the future, I do not view the process with any misgivings.

The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.

Laws just or unjust may govern men's actions. Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words. The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

The maxim Nothing but perfection may be spelled Paralysis

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.

There is a precipice on either side of you -- a precipice of caution and a precipice of over-daring.

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

The Russians will try all the rooms in a house, enter those that are not locked, and when they come to one that cannot be broken into, they will withdraw and invite you to dine genially that that same evening.

Craft is common both to skill and deceit.

Censure is often useful, praise is often deceitful

When I look back on all the worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.

In time of war, when truth is so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies

We must beware of needless innovation, especially when guided by logic.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

Don't argue about difficulties. The difficulties will argue for themselves.

Young people at universities study to achieve knowledge and not to learn a trade. We must all learn how to support ourselves, but we must also learn how to live. We need a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of modern engineers.

I am not invested with dictatorial powers. If I were, I should be quite ready to dictate.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.

The only guide to a man is his conscience the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield. . .

The Bomb brought peace but man alone can keep that peace.

'Not in vain' may be the pride of those who survived and the epitaph of those who fell. The eight thousand paratroopers of the First British Airborne Division who landed in Arnhem, Holland, behind the German lines and held the area for nine days and nights, with a loss of six thousand. September 1944 Major General R. E. Urquhart, the division commander radioed to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery All will be ordered to break out rather than surrender.

(Prime Minister Joseph) Chamberlain loves the working man - he loves to see him work

In Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the New World to the Old.

The Arabs are a backwards people who eat nothing but Camel dung

This wicked man Hitler, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame.

Here Churchill repeats with approval a statement he had first made in January, 1930 'at a meeting at the Cannon Street Hotel.' 'Sooner or later you will have to crush Gandhi and the Indian Congress and all they stand for.'

I like a man who grins when he fights.

There was a man who sold a hyena skin while the beast still lived and who was killed in hunting it.

Air power can either paralyze the enemy's military action or compel him to devote to the defense of his bases and communications a share of his straitened resources far greater that what we need in the attack.

Never, never, never, never give up.

It would be an inconvenient rule if nothing could be done until everything can be done.

When you are going thru hell the only choice is to keep going

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

We will have no truce or parley with you Hitler, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst and we will do our best.

The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes in life they make five or minus three and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye.