Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for much of the Second World War. His inspirational leadership took Britain from the jaws of defeat to ultimate victory.
Churchill was well known as a man of courage and conviction. He faced up to any problems with determination and steadfast confidence. He trained as a soldier and saw action in Cuba, the North West Frontier of India, Sudan, and South Africa during the Boer Wars. His bravery was proved by his actions in saving an armored train, and his ingenuity enabled him to escape from captivity.
Churchill was born in 1874, the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and American heiress Jennie Jerome. This made him half-American, and he often credited his success with the extra insight he gained into world affairs because of this.
His desire to be active in making Britain a force for good in the world led him into the political arena. He became an MP and subsequently held several ministerial positions. Holding office allowed him to influence government decisions.
In the mid-1920s, he was out of Parliament, but never a man to be idle; he devoted his time to painting and writing. He enjoyed physical work, too, and spent time on building projects and gardening. His enormous energy and restless nature could not be contained, yet he never wasted time or effort. He always directed his energies into positive and worthwhile activities.
Churchill came back to Parliament in 1924 and returned to the Government as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1929 the Labour Party formed a Government, and Churchill spent the next ten years out of ministerial office though he remained an MP.
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
Winston Churchill
Again, he returned to writing and followed political issues keenly. Developments in Europe worried Churchill immensely, and he was wary of Hitler. In September 1939, war was declared, and Churchill returned to take charge of the Admiralty once again, in the Government led by Neville Chamberlain.
The first few months of the war were disastrous for Britain, with the failure of expeditions to Norway, and the invasion of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg by Germany. Chamberlain resigned, and Churchill replaced him at the head of a Coalition Government.
There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
Winston Churchill
Some people believe that the sole purpose of Churchill’s whole life and wealth of experience was for him to become Britain’s wartime leader. His seemingly inexhaustible energy, command of every detail of war planning, and his ability to inspire people to great effort and sacrifice made him the ideal person to take charge. So many Winston Churchill quotes from the war have come down to us as inspirational as well as thought-provoking.
Winston Churchill Quotes
Never, never, never give up.
Winston Churchill
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
Winston Churchill
Time and money are largely interchangeable terms.
Winston Churchill
To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to change often.
Winston Churchill
Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
Winston Churchill
Vengeance is the most costly and dissipating of luxuries.
Winston Churchill
Harsh laws are at times better than no laws at all.
Winston Churchill
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
Winston Churchill
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
Winston Churchill
Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill
One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.
Winston Churchill
It is not in our power to anticipate our destiny.
Winston Churchill
Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
Winston Churchill
All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope.
Winston Churchill
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
Winston Churchill
Broadly speaking short words are best and the old words when short, are best of all.
Winston Churchill
My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.
Winston Churchill
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.
Winston Churchill
To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to change often.
Winston Churchill
Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
Winston Churchill
All wisdom is not new wisdom.
Winston Churchill
Every man should ask himself each day whether he is not too readily accepting negative solutions.
Winston Churchill
Attitude is a little thing that makes a BIG difference.
Winston Churchill
If you destroy a free market you create a black market.
Winston Churchill
Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill
The price of greatness is responsibility.
Winston Churchill
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill
All I can say is that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
Winston Churchill
Everyone has his day, and some days last longer than others.
Winston Churchill
Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.
Winston Churchill
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy then an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then it becomes a tyrant and, in the last stage, just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.
Winston Churchill
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something in your life.
Winston Churchill
Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
Winston Churchill
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
Winston Churchill
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
Winston Churchill
The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
Winston Churchill
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
Winston Churchill
One ought to be just before one is generous.
Winston Churchill
We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.
Winston Churchill
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
Winston Churchill
We shall not fail or falter. We shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.
Winston Churchill
It is wonderful what great strides can be made when there is a resolute purpose behind them.
Winston Churchill
What is adequacy? Adequacy is no standard at all.
Winston Churchill
Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.
Winston Churchill
There is always much to be said for not attempting more than you can do and for making a certainty of what you try. But this principle, like others in life and war, has it exceptions.
Winston Churchill
If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.
Winston Churchill
There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right.
Winston Churchill
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill
In the course of my life I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.
Winston Churchill
I never worry about action, but only about inaction.
Winston Churchill
Every man should ask himself each day whether he is not too readily accepting negative solutions.
Winston Churchill
War never pays its dividends in cash on the money it costs.
Winston Churchill
It is wonderful what great strides can be made when there is a resolute purpose behind them.
Winston Churchill
The first duty of the university is to teach wisdom, not a trade; character, not technicalities. We want a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of engineers.
Winston Churchill
Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.
Winston Churchill
In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound and everything that is sound is disagreeable.
Winston Churchill
You will never get to the end of the journey if you stop to shy a stone at every dog that barks.
Winston Churchill
All I can say is that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
Winston Churchill
For myself I am an optimist—it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
Winston Churchill
This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
Winston Churchill
The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.
Winston Churchill
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
Winston Churchill
One always measures friendships by how they show up in bad weather.
Winston Churchill
All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honour; duty; mercy; hope.
Winston Churchill
There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
Winston Churchill
The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that when nations are strong they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are often no longer strong.
Winston Churchill
You must look at facts because they look at you.
Winston Churchill
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Winston Churchill
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
Winston Churchill
If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find that we have lost the future.
Winston Churchill
We have a lot of anxieties, and one cancels out another.
Winston Churchill
It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.
Winston Churchill
Nourish your hopes, but do not overlook realities.
Winston Churchill
It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.
Winston Churchill
To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real.
Winston Churchill
The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
Winston Churchill
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
Winston Churchill
It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.
Winston Churchill
Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.
Winston Churchill
Attitude is a little thing that makes a BIG difference.
Winston Churchill
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, it’s also what it takes to sit down and listen.
Winston Churchill
Craft is common both to skill and deceit.
Winston Churchill
Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
Winston Churchill
In a war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill is one of the twentieth century’s most significant figures. He embodies all the qualities that are needed for a person to achieve success. His far-sightedness, determination, and perseverance in the face of all difficulties make him an ideal person to copy. He also had great energy, and a commitment to hard work that everyone aiming for success needs to emulate. Add courage and attention to detail, and we see how every Winston Churchill quote is a gem to be valued.
