465 Quotes by Winston Churchill (Page 2 of 4)

We must not lose our faculty to dare, particularly in dark days.

The one who cannot see that on Earth a big endeavor is taking place, an important plan, on which realization we are allowed to collaborate as faithful servants, certainly has to be blind.

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter, let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures.

I let the argument rip healthily between the departments. This is a very good way to finding out the truth.

Saving is a fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you.

Success is never final.

The love of a foster mother for her charge appears absolutely irrational.

We are all functioning at a small fraction of our capacity.

Advertising nourishes the consuming power of men. It sets up before a man the goal of a better home, better clothing, better food for himself and his family. It spurs individual exertion and greater production.

It has not fallen to your lot to command great armies. You had to create them, organize them and inspire them.

The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen's lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire.

I look like a down-and-out drunk who has been picked out of the gutter in the Strand.

Have no fear of the future. Let us go forward into its mysteries, tear away the veils which hide it from our eyes, and move onwards with confidence and courage.

Time and the Ocean and some guiding star and High Cabal have made us what we are.

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. From the highest to the humblest tasks, all are of equal honor; all have their part to play.

The high roads of the future will be clear, not only for us but for all, not only for our time but for a century to come.

I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.

One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided wherever possible.

Appeasement is feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last.

The jury system has come to stand for all we mean by English justice. The scrutiny of 12 honest jurors provides defendants and plaintiffs alike a safeguard from arbitrary perversion of the law.

Little did we guess that what has been called the century of the common man would witness as its outstanding feature more common men killing each other with greater facilities than any other five centuries together in the history of the world.

He is like a female llama surprised in her bath.

Please put the ladybug outside without harming her.

The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

Expert knowledge is limited knowledge.

Armed with a paint-box, one cannot be bored, one cannot be left at a loose end, one cannot have several days on one's hands.

No one ever finds life worth living -- one has to make it worth living.

The difference between mere management and leadership is communication.

I'm going to make a long speech because I've not had the time to prepare a short one.

Magna Carta provided a system of checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or a fool.

Here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.

When I'm in office I always keep Members of Parliament talking. If they stopped they might start thinking.

Achievement is not last, disappointment is not deadly: It is the mettle to proceed with that matters.

The English never draw a line without blurring it.

My ability to persuade my wife to marry me was quite my most brilliant achievement ... Of course, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to have got through what I had to go through in peace and war without the devoted aid of what we call, in England, one's better half.

Praise the humanities, my boy. That'll make them think you're broadminded!

When a new book appears one should read an old one.

We must have a better word than prefabricated, why not ready-made?

Dead birds don't fall out of their nests.

To achieve the extirpation of Nazi tyranny there are no lengths of violence to which we will not go.

From now on we shall bomb Germany on an ever-increasing scale, month by month, year by year, until the Nazi regime has either been exterminated by us or -- better still -- torn to pieces by the German people themselves.

Nothing is perfect on the human stage.

Painting a picture is like trying to fight a battle.

The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.

Watch your character -- for your character is your destiny.

May the pain you have known and the conflict you have experienced give you the strength to walk through life facing each new situation with courage and optimism.

Bearing ourselves humbly before God... we await undismayed the impending assault.... be the ordeal sharp or long, or both, we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parlay; we may show mercy -- we shall ask for none.

Indeed I do not think we should be justified in using any but the more sombre tones and colours while our people, our Empire, and indeed the whole English-speaking world are passing through a dark and deadly valley.

Victory will never be found by taking the path of least resistance.

Playing golf is like chasing a quinine pill around a cow pasture.

There comes a precious moment in all of our lives when we are tapped on the shoulder and offered the opportunity to do something very special that is unique to us and our abilities, what a tragedy it would be if we are not ready or willing.

To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real.

Building slow destroyers! One might as well breed slow race horses.

Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.

In Russia a man is called reactionary if he objects to having his property stolen and his wife and children murdered.

An extra yawn one morning in the springtime, an extra snooze one night in the autumn is all that we ask in return for dazzling gifts. We borrow an hour one night in April; we pay it back with golden interest five months later.

Our inheritance of well-founded, slowly conceived codes of honor, morals and manners, the passionate convictions which so many hundreds of millions share together of the principles of freedom and justice, are far more precious to us than anything which scientific discoveries could bestow.

We are not meant to find peace in this world. The spirit of life cannot exist without effort. Destroy the rivalries of man and nations and you will have destroyed all that makes for betterment and progress on Earth.

A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.

The man who stands firm in order to protect a sand-castle can never be relied upon; for he has given away his common sense.

The most beautiful voice in the world is that of an educated Southern woman.

I'd rather spend half an hour in the company of a top carpenter, than three hours in the company of an average brain surgeon.

So long as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm.

Doubts could be swept away only by deeds.

It may well be that we shall by a process of sublime irony have reached a state in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.

I drink a great deal. I sleep a little, and I smoke cigar after cigar. That is why I am in two-hundred-percent form.

One may imagine that a man who blew the trumpet for his living would be glad to play the violin for his amusement.

Those who plan do better than those who do not plan, even should they rarely stick to their plan.

Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valor our only shield. We must be united, we must be undaunted, we must be inflexible.

Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told.

Human beings are of two classes: those whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; and those whose work and pleasure are one.

The women's suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers, and husbands.

The world today is ruled by harassed politicians absorbed in getting into office or turning out the other man so that not much room is left for debating the great issues on their merits.

The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the future of Christian civilisation.

I have never promised anything but blood, tears, toil and sweat. Now, however we have a new experience. We have a victory -- a remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers and warmed and cheered all our hearts.

Every offensive lost its force as it proceeded. It was like throwing a bucket of water over the floor. It first rushed forward, then soaked forward, and finally stopped altogether until another bucket could be brought.

The old wars were decided by their episodes rather than by their tendencies. In this war, the tendencies are far more important than the episodes.

I cannot but think we have much to be thankful for, and more still to hope for in the future.

It is better to be frightened now than killed hereafter.

The greatest advances in human civilization have come when we
recovered what we had lost: when we learned the lessons of history.

Men and kings must be judged in the testing moments of their lives. Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.

It was evident however that the lawyers would have to have their say....This also opened up a vista both lengthy and obscure.

Their insatiable lust for power is only equaled by their incurable impotence in exercising it.

I have found in my experience of war, that plans are useless, but planning is invaluable.

I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.

Be a peg, hammered into the frozen ground, immovable.

If you simply take up the attitude of defending a mistake, there will no hope of improvement.

Tidiness is a virtue, symmetry is often a constituent of beauty.

Do not turn the superior eye of critical passivity upon these efforts... We must not be ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box.

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes.

We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.

Perfect solutions of our difficulties are not to be looked for in an imperfect world.

Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.

Perfectionism spells paralysis.

The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.

I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Book of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since.

I had been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who got drunk -- and I would have liked to have the boozing scholars of the Universities wheeled into line and properly chastised for their squalid misuse of what I must ever regard as a gift of the gods.

Air superiority is the ultimate expression of military power.

Not to have an adequate air force in the present state of the world is to compromise the foundations of national freedom and independence.

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 strained resources far greater that what we need in the attack.

Never does a man portray his character more vividly than when proclaiming the character of another.

Here was a place where real things were going on. Here was a scene of vital action. Here was a place where anything might happen. Here was a place where something would certainly happen. Here I might leave my bones.

There are men in the world who derive an exaltation from the proximity of disaster and ruin, as other from success.

I do not wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries; that what used to be called the submerged tenth can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their level.

In order to become a great man, one must first be a great rascal.

You have to run risks. There are no certainties in war. There is a precipice on either side of you -- a precipice of caution and a precipice of over-daring.

For with primacy in power is also joined an awe inspiring accountability to the future.

I have never accepted what many people have kindly said -- namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it.

Hasty work and premature decisions may lead to penalties out of all proportion to the issues immediately involved.

Land monopoly is not only monopoly, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies; it is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly.

Renown awaits the commander who first restores artillery to its prime importance on the battlefield.

The test of real character is what a man does when he is tired.

It is hard, if not impossible, to snub a beautiful woman -- they remain beautiful and the snub recoils.

There is more blood than paint upon these hands. All those thousands of men killed. We thought it would be a little job, and so it might have been if it had begun in the right way.

If I had my way, I would write the word 'insure' over every door of every cottage and upon the blotting pad of every public man, because I am convinced that, for sacrifice that are conceivably small, families can be secured against catastrophes which otherwise would smash them forever.

The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash.

Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders' hearth.

You must be prepared for further efforts of mind and body and further sacrifices to great causes, if you are not to fall back into the rut if inertia, the confusion of aim and the craven fear of being great.

I have in my life concentrated more on self-expression than self-denial.

There is no surer method of economizing and saving money than in the reduction of the number of officials.

The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war or servitude must be established on solid foundations and must be guarded by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than submit to tyranny.

If you want to discover new oceans, you must first have the courage to leave shore.

God for a month of power and a good shorthand writer.

The Times is speechless, and takes three columns to express its speechlessness.

Socialism is like a dream. Sooner or later you wake up to reality.

When great causes are on the move in the world, stirring all men's souls, drawing them from their firesides, casting aside comfort, wealth and the pursuit of happiness in response to impulses at once awe-striking and irresistible, we learn that we are spirits, not animals.

The rhinoceros stood ... about five hundred yards away ... not a twentieth-century animal at all, but an odd, grim straggler from the Stone Age.

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is a fateful fatalistic apathy.

I do not apologize for the takeover of the region by the Jews from the Palestinians in the same way I don't apologize for the takeover of America by the whites from the Red Indians or the takeover of Australia from the blacks. It is natural for a superior race to dominate an inferior one.

Science has given to this generation the means of unlimited disaster or of unlimited progress. There will remain the greater task of directing knowledge lastingly towards the purpose of peace and human good.

It is wonderful what great strides can be made when there is a resolute purpose behind them.

Unteachable from infancy to tomb -- There is the first and main characteristic of mankind.

After a time, civil servants tend to become no longer servants and no longer civil.

There's no such thing as a good tax.

The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits--not animals…. There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.