Quotes by Winston Churchill
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I am weary of a task which is done and I hope I shall not shrink when the aftermath ends. My only wish is to live peacefully out the remaining years -- if years they be.

There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book appears one should read an old one. As as author I would not recommend too strict an adherence to this saying.

An aphorism is not an aphorism unless you know what it means.

The 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.

Censure is often useful, praise is often deceitful.

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 same evening.

An American diplomat is sometimes like a bull who carries his own china shop around with him.

I do not hold that we should rearm in order to fight. I hold that we should rearm in order to parley.

The person of truth must be covered with bodyguards of lies.

A small lie needs a bodyguard of bigger lies to protect it.

Everything trends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?

I propose that 100,000 degenerate Britons should be forcibly sterilized and others put in labour camps to halt the decline of the British race.

The British people are good all through. You can test them as you would put a bucket into the sea and always find it salt.

I began my education at a very early age; in fact, right after I left college.

There is no sphere of human thought in which it is easier to show superficial cleverness and the appearance of superior wisdom than in discussing questions of currency and exchange.

Science bestowed immense new powers on man, and at the same time, created conditions which were largely beyond his comprehension.

Socialism would gather all power to the supreme party and party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of civil servants no longer servants, no longer civil.

Civilisation will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.

The shortest road to ruin is to emulate the methods of your adversary.

I do not resent criticism, even when for the sake of emphasis; it parts for the time with reality.

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

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.

Where there is great power, there is great responsibility.

Opening amenities are often opening inanities.

I think it would be so much better for me to learn something which would be useful to me in the army, as well as affording me exercise and amusement.

When I look round to see how we can win the war, I see that there is only one sure path ... and that is absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland.

The influence exercised over the human mind by apt analogies is and has always been immense. Whether they translate an established truth into simple language or whether they adventurously aspire to reveal the unknown, they are among the most formidable weapons of the rhetorician.

The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the means of victory.

Today I may way before an awestruck world; I am still master of my fate. I am still captain of my soul.

The game of life does not proceed like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes they make five, or minus four, and sometimes the blackboard topples over in the middle of the sum and the pedagogue is left with a black eye.

It is not open to the cool bystander ... to set himself up as an impartial judge of events which would never have occurred had he outstretched a helping hand in time.

I get my exercise being a pallbearer for those of my friends who believed in regular running and calisthenics.

I could not help reflecting that the bullet which had struck the chestnut horse had certainly passed within a foot of my head. So at any rate I had been 'under fire.' That was something.

One cannot leap a chasm in two jumps.

The flame of Christian ethics is still our highest guide.

Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred bloodsoaked battlefields.

In battles two things are usually required of the Commander-in-Chief: to make a good plan for his army and, secondly, to keep a strong reserve.

There is not much collective security in a flock of sheep on the way to the butcher.

It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.

The substance of the eminent Socialist gentlemen's speech is that making a profit is a sin. It is my belief that the real sin is taking a loss!

Elderly people and those in authority cannot always be relied upon to take enlightened and comprehending views of what they call the indiscretions of youth.

Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees...to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation.

When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.

And what a plan! This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever occurred.

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.