464 Inspiring Quotes by Winston Churchill
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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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.