Quotes by Winston Churchill

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry. 

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

Schools have not necessarily much to do with education…they are mainly institutions of control where certain basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school. 

I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents. 

These, Gentlemen, are the opinions upon which I base my facts. 

I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic. 

When you are going through hell, keep on going. Never never never give up. 

Sometimes our best is simply not enough…. We have to do what is required. 

Success is never final. 

There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction. 

Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn. 

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. 

Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it all others depend. 

What is a fine person or a beauteous face, Unless deportment give them decent grace; Blessed with all other requisites to please, To want the striking elegance of ease; Awkward, embarrassed, stiff, without the skill Of moving gracefully, or standing still. 

It helps to write down half a dozen things which are worrying me. Two of them, say, disappear; about two of them nothing can be done, so it’s no use worrying; and two perhaps can be settled. 

Remember gentleman, it’s not just France we’re fighting for, it’s Champagne! 

It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty’s Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude. 

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! 

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

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

A communist is like a crocodile: when it opens its mouth you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile or preparing to eat you up. 

From the days of Spartacus, Weishophf, Karl Marx, Trotski, Belacoon, Rosa Luxenburg, and Ema Goldman, this world conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definite recognizable role in the tragedy of the French revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th Century. And now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their head and have become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire. 

I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism. 

I know of no case where a man added to his dignity by standing on it. 

Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them. 

The pictorial battlefield becomes a sea of mud mercifully veiled by the fog of war. 

It is all right to rat, but you can’t re-rat. 

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. 

It is better to be making the news than taking it, to be an actor rather than a critic. 

We (The British) have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy. 

Working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation. 

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us. 

Never trust a man who has not a single redeeming vice. 

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it. 

My mother made a brilliant impression upon my childhood life. She shone for me like the evening star. 

If you find something you really love, you will never work again. 

In time of war, soldiers, however sensible, care a great deal more on some occasions about slaking their thirst than about the danger of enteric fever. Better known as typhoid, the disease is often spread by drinking contaminated water. 

It is arguable whether the human race have been gainers by the march of science beyond the steam engine. Electricity opens a field of infinite conveniences to ever greater numbers, but they may well have to pay dearly for them. But anyhow in my thought I stop short of the internal combustion engine which has made the world so much smaller. Still more must we fear the consequences of entrusting a human race so little different from their predecessors of the so-called barbarous ages such awful agencies as the atomic bomb. Give me the horse. 

May there not be methods of using explosive energy incomparably more intense than anything heretofore discovered? Might not a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings-nay, to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke? Could not explosives even of the existing type be guided automatically in flying machines by wireless or other rays, without a human pilot, in ceaseless procession upon a hostile city, arsenal, camp or dockyard? 

Science unfolded her treasures and her secrets to the desperate demands of men, and placed in their hands agencies and apparatus almost decisive in their character. Reflecting on the outcome of World War I, and an ominous future. 

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains. 

Bessie Braddock: “Winston, you’re drunk. Churchill: “Bessie, you’re ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober. 

All dogs look up to you. All cats look down on you. Only the pig looks at you as an equal 

If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary. 

Make sure that the beer – four pints a week – goes to the troops under fire before any of the parties in the rear get a drop. 

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

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. 

I always like to learn, but I don’t always like to be taught. 

How I hated schools, and what a life of anxiety I lived there. I counted the hours to the end of every term, when I should return home. 

I am convinced that there is no smarter, handier, or more adaptable body of troops in the world. 

Air power may either end war or end civilization. 

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

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

The statesman who yields to war fever…is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. 

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. 

There is in the act of preparing, the moment you start caring. 

There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right. 

We must be united, we must be undaunted, we must be inflexible. Our qualities and deeds must burn and glow through the gloom oEurope until they become the veritable beacon oits salvation. 

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. 

You ask, What is our policy? I will say; ‘It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.’ You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory-victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival. 

A study of Disease-of Pestilences methodically prepared and deliberately launched upon man and beast-is certainly being pursue in the laboratories of more than one great country. Blight to destroy crops, Anthrax to slay horses and cattle, Plague to poison not armies but whole districts – such are the lines along which military science is remorselessly advancing. 

Singapore could only be taken after a siege by an army of at least 50,000 men. It is not considered possible that the Japanese would embark on such a mad enterprise. 

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Atlantic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind the line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe…All these famous cities…lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. 

Without ships, we cannot live. 

Good night, then – sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly on all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn. 

We must be very careful not to assign this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations 

In Hitler’s launching of the Nazi campaign on Russia, we can already see, after six months of fighting, that he has made one of the outstanding blunders in history. 

The enemy is still proud and powerful. He is hard to get at. He still possesses enormous armies, vast resources, and invaluable strategic territories…No one can tell what new complications and perils might arise in four or five more years of war. And it is in the dragging-out of the war at enormous expense, until the democracies are tired or bored or split that the main hopes of Germany and Japan must reside. 

The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-Boat peril…It did not take the form of flaring battles and glittering achievements, it manifested itself through statistics, diagrams, and curves unknown to the nation, incomprehensible to the public. 

The whole of northern Norway was covered with snow to depths which none of our soldiers had ever seen, felt, or imagined. There were neither snow-shoes nor skis – still less skiers. We must do our best. Thus began this ramshackle campaign. 

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

We have taken a grave and hazardous decision to sustain the Greeks and try to make a Balkan Front. 

Wars are not won by evacuations. 

If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail. 

And you, madam, are ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning. 

Most people hate the taste of beer – to begin with. It is, however, a prejudice that many people have been able to overcome. 

Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it. 

There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies. 

By swallowing evil words unsaid, no one has ever harmed his stomach. 

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 maxim of the British people is; Business as Usual! 

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

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

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

When you are on a great horse, you have the best seat you will ever have. 

A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow. 

When a nation has allowed itself to fall under a tyrannical regime, it cannot be absolved from the faults due to the guilt of that regime. 

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

There but for the grace of God, goes God. 

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. 

There is not one single social or economic principle or concept in the philosophy of the Russian Bolshevik which has not been realized, carried into action, and enshrined in immutable laws a million years ago by the white ant. 

There is no working middle course in wartime. 

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. 

It would be a great reform in politics if perception could be made to spread as easily and as rapidly as foolishness. 

We are weakened and we are tired, but we are not done yet. 

The loyalties which center upon number one are enormous. If he trips, he must be sustained. If he make mistakes, they must be covered. If he sleeps, he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good, he must be pole-axed. 

We have a lot of anxieties, and one cancels out another very often. 

We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God’s good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old. 

Democracy is the best form of the worst type of government 

No matter how enmeshed a commander becomes in the elaboration of his own thoughts, it is sometimes necessary to take the enemy into account. 

Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valor, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. 

No two on earth in all things can agree. All have some daring singularity. 

I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar. 

You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves. 

If, however, there is to be a war of nerves let us make sure our nerves are strong and are fortified by the deepest convictions of our hearts. 

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. 

They feed the crocodile in the hope that he will eat them last. 

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

I am sure that the mistakes of that time will not be repeated; we should probably make another set of mistakes. 

Indomitable in retreat, invincible in advance; insufferable in victory. 

In defeat, unbeatable; in victor, unbearable 

I have not always been wrong. History will bear me out, particularly as I shall write that history myself. 

Beginning with audacity is a very great part of the art of painting. 

On 17th July there came to us at Potsdam the eagerly-awaited news of the trial of the atomic bomb in the [New] Mexican desert. Success beyond all dreams crowded this sombre, magnificent venture of our American allies. The detailed reports … could leave no doubt in the minds of the very few who were informed, that we were in the presence of a new factor in human affairs, and possessed of powers which were irresistible. 

This revelation of the secrets of nature, long mercifully withheld from man, should arouse the most solemn reflections in the mind and conscience of every human being capable of comprehension. We must indeed pray that these awful agencies will be made to conduce to peace among the nations, and that instead of wreaking measureless havoc upon the entire globe, may become a perennial fountain of world prosperity. 

The cat does more for the war effort than you do. He acts as a hot-water bottle and saves fuel and power. 

You create your own universe as you go along. The stronger your imagination, the more variegated your universe. When you leave off dreaming, the universe ceases to exist. 

I do not admit… that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia… by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race… has come in and taken its place. 

This movement among the Jews is not new… this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century… 

I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilized tribes. 

Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job. 

The only thing wrong with Christianity is the lack of suffering. 

If I was your wife Sir, I’d poison you! Madam, if you were my wife, I’d let you! 

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more. 

Keep calm and carry on. 

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age… Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ 

There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. 

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

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. 

There is no limit to the ingenuity of man if it is properly and vigorously applied under conditions of peace and justice. 

Science burrows its insulted head in the filth of slaughterous inventions. 

The Dark Ages may return-the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science; and what might now shower immeasureable material blessings upon mankind may even bring about its total destruction. Beware! I say. Time may be short. Referring to the discovery of atomic energy. 

[Should Britain fail, then the entire world would] sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister … by the lights of perverted science. 

… we ought to have saints’ days to commemorate the great discoveries which have been made for all mankind, and perhaps for all time-or for whatever time may be left to us. Nature … is a prodigal of pain. I should like to find a day when we can take a holiday, a day of jubilation when we can fete good Saint Anaesthesia and chaste and pure Saint Antiseptic. … I should be bound to celebrate, among others, Saint Penicillin… 

The water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable, we had to add whisky. By diligent effort, I learned to like it. 

Mr. Churchill your drunk!” Mr. Churchill: “And you, Lady Astor, are ugly. As for my condition, it will pass by the morning. You, however, will still be ugly. 

I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which lead to a dark gulf. 

You must understand that this war is not against Hitler or National Socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it is in the hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest. 

Never run away from anything. Never! 

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. 

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step… 

No matter. The dead bird does not leave the nest. 

[There are dangers in] the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts. 

The worst mistake that a statesman can make is to promise victory and to see it dashed, the hopes dashed. 

The United States abd usually be reiled on to do the right thing, but only after they have tried all the other alternatives. 

Well, dinner would have been splendid… if the wine had been as cold as the soup, the beef as rare as the service, the brandy as old as the fish, and the maid as willing as the Duchess. 

If you put two economists xin a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions. 

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

We hoped to land a wild cat that would tear out the bowels of the Boche. Instead we have stranded a vast whale with its tail flopping about in the water. 

The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending. 

Anyone who is not a liberal in his youth has no heart. Anyone who remains so as he matures has no brain! 

I am very glad there are quite a number of people born with a gift and a liking for all of this; like great chessplayers who play sixteen games at once blindfold and die quite soon of epilepsy. Serve them right! I hope the Mathematicians, however, are well rewarded. I promise never to blackleg their profession nor take the bread out of their mouths. 

There are two kinds of success-initial and ultimate. 

Remember the story of the Spanish prisoner. For many years he was confined in a dungeon… One day it occurred to him to push the door of his cell. It was open; and it had never been locked. 

the arabs are a backward people who eat nothing but camel dung. 

The true guide of life is to do what is right. 

You can always rely on America to do the right thing – once it has exhausted the alternatives. 

The soul of freedom is deathless; it cannot, and will not perish. 

Everyone has a right to pronounce foreign names as he chooses. 

The Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor. The clearance of the race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act, on a scale so great, could well be. 

The chief aim of wisdom is to enable one to bear with the stupidity of the ignorant. 

Art is to beauty what honor is to honesty. 

Diplomacy is the art of telling plain truths without giving offense. 

There are no people in the world who are so slow to develop hostile feelings against a foreign country as the Americans, and no people who, once estranged, are more difficult to win back. 

It is better to do the wrong thing that to do nothing. 

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

It is a curious fact about British Islanders, who hate drill and have not been invaded for nearly a thousand years, that as danger comes nearer and grows they become progressively less nervous; when it is imminent the are fierce, when it is mortal they are fearless. 

The element of the unexpected and the unforeseeable is what gives some of its relish to life and saves us from falling into the mechanical thralldom of the logicians. 

Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so paragraphs must fit into another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages. 

There are two processes which we adopt consciously or unconsciously when we try to prophesy. We can seek a period in the past whose conditions resemble as closely as possible those of our day, and presume that the sequel to that period will, save for some minor alterations, be similar. Secondly, we can survey the general course of development in our immediate past, and endeavor to prolong it into the near future. The first is the method the historian; the second that of the scientist. Only the second is open to us now, and this only in a partial sphere. 

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 le. 

Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I’d poison your tea. Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it. 

The United States is a land of free speech. Nowhere is speech freer – not even here where we sedulously cultivate it even in its most repulsive form. 

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. 

I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations 

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. 

The man who can master his time can master nearly anything. 

The test of a people is what they can do when they’re tired. 

He who fails to plan is planning to fail. 

A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with. 

The flags of the Confederate States of America were very important and a matter of great pride to those citizens living in the Confederacy. They are also a matter of great pride for their descendants as part of their heritage and history. 

I was, on the whole, considerably discouraged by my school days. It was not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the beginning of the race. 

It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides. 

A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation; a baboon in a zoo is an object of public curiosity; but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern. 

Your greatest fears are created by your imagination. Don’t give in to them. 

Everyone can recognize history when it happens. Everyone can recognize history after is has happened; but only the wise man knows at the moment what is vital and permanent, what is lasting and memorable. 

If you want me to speak for two minutes, it will take me three weeks of preparation. If you want me to speak for thirty minutes, it will take me a week to prepare. If you want me to speak for an hour, I am ready now. 

Everybody stumbles across a golden opportunity at least once in a lifetime. Unfortunately most people just pick themselves up, dust themselves down, and walk away from it. 

When you leave off dreaming, the universe ceases to exist. 

He [President Franklin D. Roosevelt] died in harness, and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors and airmen who died side by side with ours and carrying out their tasks to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his. 

I thought of a remark . . . that the United States is like a ‘gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.’ Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful. 

The latest refinements of science are linked with the cruelties of the Stone Age. 

When they told me that by the year 2100 women would rule the world, my reply was ‘Still?’ 

Smoking Cigars is like falling in love. First, you are attracted by its shape; you stay for its flavor, and you must always remember never, never to let the flame go out! 

Mr Churchill, to what do you attribute your success in life? Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down. 

A gentleman is a man who is only rude when he intends to be. 

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

The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. 

There is nothing like oratory, it is a skill that can turn a commoner into a king. 

Plans are worthless. Planning is priceless. 

Where does the family start? It starts with a young man falling in love with a girl – no superior alternative has yet been found. 

It’s Never Over ’till it’s over! Never Give Up! Never. 

Life can either be accepted or changed. If it is not accepted, it must be changed. If it cannot be changed, then it must be accepted. 

The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. 

I had a feeling once about Mathematics – that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me – the Byss and Abyss. I saw – as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor’s Show – a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go. 

One man with conviction will overwhelm a hundred who have only opinions. 

Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. 

When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject. 

In Success you deserve it and in defeat, you need it. 

Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely. 

It is never possible to guarantee success, it is only possible to deserve it. 

He spoke with more eloquence than wisdom. 

I drink and smoke and I am two hundred percent fit. 

Never pass up the chance to sit down or go to the bathroom. 

Perfectionism spells paralysis. 

Painting a picture is like trying to fight a battle. 

Never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man. 

Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about. 

As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us. 

He has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts. 

You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner, and no halfway measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. 

If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost. 

Strategy is all very well, but it pays to give thought from time to time to the results. 

Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but heroes fight like Greeks. 

Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential. 

Champagne is the wine of civilization and the oil of government. 

Un pesimista ve la dificultad en cada oportunidad; un optimista ve una oportunidad en cada dificultad 

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

No sky is heavy if the heart be light 

It is not given to princes, statesmen and captains to pierce the mysteries of the future, and even the most penetrating gaze reaches only conclusions which, however seemingly vindicated at a given moment, are inexorably effaced by time. 

Never, ever ever ever ever give up. 

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

In war, the truth must be guarded by a body guard of lies. 

It is a good thing to stand away from the canvas from time to time and take a full view of the picture. 

Canada is the linchpin of the English-speakin g world 

If you mean to profit, learn to please. 

Don’t give your sons money. Give them horses. Many a good son has been ruined through the acquisition of money but no good son has been ruined through the acquisition of horses. Unless they fell and broke their neck, which when taken at the gallop is a very good death to die. 

To be conservative at 20 is heartless and to be a liberal at 60 is plain idiocy. 

Whenever I feel the need to take some exercise I lie down until the feeling goes away. 

Most of the significant contributions that have been made to society have been made by people who were tired. 

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

I am in favor of deliberately spreading methodically prepared bacteria among people and animals – mildew … to destroy the harvests, anthrax to destroy horses and livestock, and the plague, in order to kill not only entire armies, but also the inhabitants of large regions. 

Give me the facts, and I will twist them the way I want, to suit my argument. 

Never abandon life. There is a way out of everything except death. 

Where there is a great deal of free speech there is always a certain amount of foolish speech. 

Success and happiness spring from facing failure after failure with enthusiasm. 

I have benefited greatly from criticism, and at no time have I suffered a lack thereof. 

If Hitler invaded Hell, I’d find something nice to say about the Devil himself. 

There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of the Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews 

Make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Let the children have their night of fun and laughter… resolved that by our daring, these same children shall not be denied their right to live in a free and decent world. 

Our future is in our hands. Our lives are what we choose to make them. 

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

If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea. 

There is required for the composition of a great commander not only massive common sense and reasoning power, not only imagination, but also an element of legerdemain, an original and sinister touch, which leaves the enemy puzzled as well as beaten. 

Before America entered the war [WW2] I knew we could not win it, but after she entered I knew we could not lose 

We must learn from misfortune the means of future strength. 

A nation which has forgotten its past can have no future. 

Even the most eminent persons are subject to the laws of gravity. 

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. 

Although always prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it should be postponed. 

Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein, we never had a defeat. 

Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all. 

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. 

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns. 

If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons. 

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and – quite as dangerous… In war, you can only be killed once. But in politics many times. 

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time. 

No comment” is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again. 

Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy. 

The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward. 

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

The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is. 

A nation that fails to honor its heroes, soon will have no heroes to honor…. 

There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. The British people can face peril or misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy, but they bitterly resent being deceived or finding that those responsible for their affairs are themselves dwelling in a fool’s paradise. 

Please put the ladybug outside without harming her. (to his butler) 

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

In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames, and in the future there will be a light which shines over all the land and sea. 

Everybody has always underrated the Russians. They keep their own secrets alike from foe and friends. 

We are with Europe but not of it. We are linked, not combined. We are interested and associated, not absorbed. And should European statesmen address us in the words that were used of old – Shall I speak for thee to the King or the Captain of the Host? – we should reply with the Shunamite woman: “Nay sir, for we dwell among our own people”. 

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

How little can we foresee the consequences either of wise or unwise action, of virtue or of malice. Without this measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed. 

I would tell myself that I was about to address the largest mass assembly of idiots ever gathered in the history of mankind. 

Time is one thing that can never be retrieved. One may lose and regain friends. One may lose and regain money. Opportunity, once spurned, may come again. But the hours that are lost in idleness can never be brought back to be used in gainful pursuits 

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. 

Logic is a poor guide compared with custom. 

The people of Asia were slaves, because they had not learned how to pronounce the word ‘no’. 

Rugby is a hooligans game played by gentlemen. 

…to win by one is enough. 

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 

There is scarcely anything more important in the government of men than the exact – I will ever say pedantic – observance of the regular forms by which the guilt or innocence of accused persons is determined. 

When you are going through hell, don’t stop. 

Oh, what is the matter with poor Puggy-Wug? Pet him and kiss him and give him a hug. Run and fetch him a suitable drug. Wrap him up tenderly all in a rug. That is the way to cure Puggy-Wug. 

One evening at Chequers the film was Oliver Twist. Rufus, as usual, had the best seat in the house, on his master’s lap. At the point when Bill Sikes was about to drown his dog to put the police off his track, Churchill covered Rufus’s eyes with his hand. He said, “Don’t look now, dear. I’ll tell you about it afterwards.” 

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

All the great things are simple. 

Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] … by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks … to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly. 

During their lifetimes, every man and woman will stumble across a great opportunity. Sadly, most of them will simply pick themselves up, dust themselves down and carry on as if nothing ever happened. 

Baldwin often times stumbles over the truth, but he always picks himself up and hurries on as if nothing had happened. 

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. 

He sees with amazement that our defeats are but the stepping stones to victory and that all his victories are stepping stones to ruin. It was apparent to me that this bad man saw quite clearly the shadow of slowly and remorselessly approaching doom, and he railed at fortune for mocking him with the glitter of fleeting success. 

No more let us alter or falter or palter. From Malta to Yalta, and Yalta to Malta. 

If I were the first of May, I should be ashamed of myself. 

If we could get out of this jam by giving up Malta and Gibraltar and some African colonies I would jump at it. But the only safe way is to convince Hitler that he cannot beat us. 

We are really doing our very best. There are no doubt many mistakes and shortcomings. A lot of things are done none too well. Some things that ought to be done have not yet been done…[But Britain’s effort has] justly commanded the wonder and admiration of every friendly nation in the world. 

Far be it from me to paint a rosy picture of the future…But I should be failing in my duty if, on the other side, I were not to convey the true impression, that this great nation is getting into its war stride. 

“I have not made any arrogant, confident, boasting predictions at all. On the contrary, I have stuck hard to my “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” to which I have added muddle and mismanagement, and that, to some extend I must admit, is what you have got out of it.” 

My hope is that the generous instincts of unity will not depart from us…[so that we] become the prey of the little folk who exist in every country and who frolic alongside the Juggernaut car of war to see what fun or notoriety they can extract from the proceedings. 

The only guide to man is his conscience. 

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

I love to learn but I do not want to be taught 

If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies, choking in his own blood upon the ground. 

The most formidable people in the world, and now the most dangerous, people who… lay down the doctrine that every frontier must be the starting out point for invasion. 

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

This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes. There are vast numbers, not only in this Island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war, but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded. This is a War of the Unknown Warriors 

Books, in all their variety, offer the human intellect the means whereby civilisation may be carried triumphantly forward. 

The facilities for advanced education must be evened out and multiplied. No one who can take advantage of a higher education should be denied this chance. You cannot conduct a modern community except with an adequate supply of persons upon whose education, whether humane, technical, or scientific, much time and money have been spent. 

I trust and believe that this College, this seed that we have sown, will grow to shelter and nurture generations who may add most notably to the strength and happiness of our people, and to the knowledge and peaceful progress of the world. ‘The mighty oak from an acorn towers; A tiny seed can fill a field with flowers.’ 

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

The privilege of a university education is a great one; the more widely it is extended the better for any country. 

It was at “Little Lodge” I was first menaced with Education. The approach of a sinister figure described as ‘the Governess’ was announced. 

In all the twelve years I was at school no one ever succeeded in making me write a Latin verse or learn any Greek except the alphabet. 

How I hated this school, and what a life of anxiety I lived there for more than two years. 

I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all. I scribbled all my opinions on the margins of the pages … From Gibbon I went to Macauley. I had learnt The Lays of Ancient Rome by heart, and loved them; and of course I knew he had written a history; but I had never read a page of it … I accepted all Macauley wrote as gospel, and I was grieved to read his harsh judgements upon the Great Duke of Marlborough. 

Better to dare mighty things and fail than to live in a grey twilight where there is neither victory nor defeat. 

If this is a blessing, it is certainly very well disguised. 

Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. 

If the British Empire is fated to pass from life into history, we must hope it will not be by the slow process of dispersion and decay, but in some supreme exertion for freedom, for right and for truth. 

It is alarming … to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal Palace while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience. 

I shall endeavor to marshal British opinion against a course of action which would bring in my opinion the greatest evils upon the people of India, upon the people of Great Britain and upon the British Empire itself. 

One would have thought that if there was one cause in the world which the Conservative party would have hastened to defend, it would be the cause of the British Empire in India … Our fight is hard. It will also be long … But win or lose, we must do our duty. If the British people are to lose their Indian Empire, they shall do so with their eyes open. 

It is with deep grief I watch the clattering down of the British Empire with all its glories and all the services it has rendered to mankind. 

In handing over the Government of India to these so-called political classes, we are handing over to men of straw, of whom, in a few years, no trace will remain. 

Without courage all other virtues lose their meaning. 

I am your servant. You have the right to dismiss me when you please. What you have no right to do is ask me to bear responsibility without the power of action. 

There comes into the life of every man a task for which he and he alone is uniquely suited. What a shame if that moment finds him either unwilling or unprepared for that which would become his finest hour. 

You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks. 

Certainly the prolonged education indispensable to the progress of society is not natural to mankind. 

Unpunctuality is a vile habit. 

The future is unknowable, but the past should give us hope. 

Nourish your hopes, but do not overlook realities. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that thrift is caused only by fear; it springs from hope as well as from fear; where there is no hope, be sure there will be no thrift. 

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

Hope has returned to the hearts of scores of millions of men and women, and with that hope there burns the flame of anger against the brutal, corrupt invader … In a dozen famous ancient States now prostrate under the Nazi yoke, the masses of the people … await the hour of liberation … That hour will strike, and its solemn peal will proclaim that the night is past and that the dawn has come. 

We see nothing but good and hope in a richer, freer, more contented European commonalty. But we have our own dreams and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed. 

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

Quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. 

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. 

Who is not liberal when young, does not have a heart. Who is not conservative when old, does not have a 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. 

Who’s in or out, who moves the grand machine, Nor stirs my curiosity, or spleen; Secrets of state no more I wish to know Than secret movements of a puppet-show; Let but the puppets move, I’ve my desire, Unseen the hand which guides the master wire. 

Americans always do the right thing, once they have exhausted all other possibilities. 

The cemetery is full of indispensable people. 

Victory is not final. Defeat is not failure. It’s all about courage. 

From the days of Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx… this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society… has been steadily growing. 

Expert knowledge is limited knowledge 

Those good at war aren’t good at peace, and those good at peace aren’t good at war. 

Only changes in mindsets can extend the frontiers of the possible. 

The reservist is twice the citizen. 

But who in war will not have his laugh amid the skulls? 

We do not war with races primarily as such. Tyranny is our foe. Whatever trapping or disguise it wears, whatever language it speaks, be it external or internal, we must for ever be on our guard, ever mobilized, ever vigilant, always ready to spring at its throat. In all this we march together. Not only do we march and strive shoulder to shoulder at this moment, under the fire of the enemy on the fields of war or in the air, but also in those realms of thought which are consecrated to the rights and the dignity of man. 

Can a nation remain healthy, can all nations draw together in a world whose brightest stars are film stars? 

America, can always be counted upon to do the right thing in the end, having first exhausted the available alternatives. 

Air power is the most difficult of military force to measure or even express in precise terms. 

Safety and certainty in oil lie in variety, and variety alone. 

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

When we run out of money, we have to start thinking. 

When I find a ladybug I ask the butler to take it outside instead of killing it. 

The first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not trade; character, not technicalities. 

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 

There is a treasure in the heart of every man if you can only find it 

The opposition occupies the benches in front of you, but the enemy sits behind you 

It is in the interest of the wage-earner to have many other alternatives open to him than service under one all-powerful employer called the State 

If we look to our responsibility to the generations yet unborn who will come after us, how can we fail to recognize that peace and freedom are inextricably bound up one with another and that the threat to one is a threat to both 

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

Lobbyists are the touts of protected industries. 

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. 

You do your worst, and we’ll do our best. 

Golf. Trying to knock a tiny ball into an even smaller hole with implements ill suited to the purpose. 

I liked wine, both red and white, and especially Champagne; and on very special occasions I could even drink a small glass of brandy. 

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. 

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world. 

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

We are shaping the world faster than we can change ourselves, and we are applying to the present the habits of the past. 

Politics is like waking up in the morning. You never know whose head you’ll find on the pillow. 

I’d prefer to be right than consistent. 

The Aryan stock is bound to triumph. 

We proceeded systematically, village by village and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. 

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. 

Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance. 

Never let a good crisis go to waste 

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

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle them, and, as it were, fondle them. Let them fall open where they will. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. 

Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind. 

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry. 

Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer, never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes, but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or events. 

An optimist sees the oportunity in every difficulty. 

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

Success is the ability to continue to move through total disaster. 

The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground. 

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes. 

Advertising nourishes the consuming power of men. 

Success is never found. Failure is never fatal. Courage is the only thing. 

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been 

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate, you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. 

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 honor and good sense. 

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

All wisdom is not new wisdom. 

This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put. 

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars England – he should have said Britain, of course – always wins one battle – the last. 

Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valor, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be. 

Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Don’t be content with things as they are. Don’t take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth. She has lived and thrived only by repeated subjugation. 

Thus, by every device from the stick to the carrot, the emaciated Austrian donkey is made to pull the Nazi barrow up an ever-steepening hill. 

There is a hush over all Europe, nay, over all the world. Alas! it is the hush of suspense, and in many lands it is the hush of fear. Listen! No, listen carefully, I think I hear something – yes, there it was quite clear. Don’t you hear it? It is the tramp of armies crunching the gravel of the parade-grounds, splashing through rain-soaked fields, the tramp of two million German soldiers and more than a million Italians going on maneuvers – yes, only on maneuvers! 

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. 

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be 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 live as slaves. 

The substance of the eminent Socialist gentleman’s speech is that making a profit is a sin, but it is my belief that the real sin is taking a loss. 

I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my fathers house to believe in democracy. Trust the people that was his message. 

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour. 

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public. 

Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend. 

Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never. Never – in anything great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. 

Socialists think profits are a vice; I consider losses the real vice. 

Nothing is so exhilarating in life as to be shot at with no result. 

It is better to be frightened now than killed hereafter. 

Twice in my lifetime the long arm of destiny has reached across the oceans and involved the entire life and manhood of the United States in a deadly struggle. There was no use in saying “We don’t want it; we won’t have it”. 

Well, dinner would have been splendid if the wine had been as cold as the soup, the beef as rare as the service, the brandy as old as the fish, and the maid as willing as the Duchess. 

Moral of the Work. In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill. 

If he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. 

Nothing in the world is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result. 

It [Chinese Labour in South Africa] could not, in the opinion of His Majesty’s Government, be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude. 

Here the two great interests Imperium et Libertas, res olim insociabiles (saith Tacitus), began to incounter each other. 

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains. 

The government of the world must be entrusted to satisfied nations, who wished nothing more for themselves than what they had…. Our power placed us above the rest. We were like rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations. 

A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.” [In an interview conducted by Bram Stoker] 

The proud German army by its sudden collapse, sudden crumbling and breaking up, has once again proved the truth of the saying ‘The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. 

We should not abandon our special relationship with the United States and Canada about the atomic bomb. 

A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation; a baboon in a zoo is an object of public curiosity; but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern. 

Sure I am this day we are masters of our fate, that the task which has been set before us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us. 

Thus ended the great American Civil War, which must upon the whole be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts of which till then there was record. 

A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.” [In an interview conducted by Bram Stoker] 

The Government of India had imprisoned Mr. Gandhi and they had been sitting outside his cell door begging him to help them out of their difficulties. 

An old battleax of a woman said to Winston Churchill, “If you were my husband I would put poison in your tea.” Churchill’s response, “Ma’am if you were my wife I would drink it. 

They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they’d make up their minds. 

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history. 

Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts … genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation … the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality …though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries [WWII] 

Always remember, a cat looks down on man, a dog looks up to man, but a pig will look man right in the eye and see his equal. 

It saves a lot of trouble if, instead of having to earn money and save it, you can just go and borrow it. 

Democracy is a very bad form of government … but all the others are so much worse. 

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. 

There must not be lacking in our leadership something of that spirit of the Austrian corporal who, when all had fallen into ruins around him, and when Germany seemed to have fallen into chaos, did not hesitate to march forth against the vast army of victorious nations and has already turned the tables decisively against them. 

The unforgivable sin of Hitler’s Germany was to develop a new economic system by which the international bankers were deprived of their profits. 

Don’t mind the five or more million Germans. Stalin will see to them they will cease to exist. 

If you’re going to walk through hell, keep going. 

You know, in war, you don’t have to be nice. You only have to be right. 

There are no limits to the majestic future which lies before the mighty expanse of Canada with its virile, aspiring, cultured, and generous-hearted people. 

It is conceivable that I might well be reborn as a Chinese coolie. In such case I should lodge a protest. 

Writing a book is an adventure. 

Any idiot can see something wrong. But can you see what is right? 

The international Jew adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. . . . This world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization, this band from the underworld . . . have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire. 

For the first 25 years of my life, I wanted freedom. For the next 25 years, I wanted order. For the next 25 years, I realized that order is freedom. 

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 this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. 

Preposition: An enormously versatile part of grammar, as in ‘What made you pick this book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for?’ 

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. 

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

Democracy means that when there’s a knock in the door at 3 am, it’s probably the milkman. 

War is horrible, but slavery is worse. 

When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you. 

Americans are a wonderful people: They will always do the right thing-after exhausting every other possible alternative. 

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose 

No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt. 

The reason for having diplomatic relations is not to confer a compliment, but to secure a convenience. [On diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China] 

There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is far worse or much harder to win. 

Thus, be every device from the stick to the carrot, the emaciated Austrian donkey is made to pull the Nazi barrow up an ever-steepening hill. 

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty. [Referring to the theory that over-production caused the Depression] 

Some people did not like this ceremonious style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite. [Churchill ended his December 8, 1941 letter to the Japanese Ambassador, declaring that a state of war now existed between the United Kingdom and Japan, with the courtly flourish “I have the honour to be, with high consideration, Sir, Your obedient servant”.] 

If one has to submit, it is wasteful not to do so with the best grace possible. 

That long (Canadian) frontier from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, guarded only by neighbourly respect and honourable obligations, as an example to every country and a pattern for the future of the world. 

Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is the allotted span for all we must cram into it! 

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

I was born under the Blue Ridge, and under that side which is blue in the evening light, in a wild land of game and forest and rushing waters. 

In war, truth is often the first casualty. 

In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnaminity In Peace: Good Will. 

No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. 

Canada is the linchpin of the English-speaking world. Canada, with those relations of friendly, affectionate intimacy with the United States on the one hand and with her unswerving fidelity to the British Commonwealth and the Motherland on the other, is the link which joins together these great branches of the human family, a link which, spanning the oceans, brings the continents into their true relation and will prevent in future generations any growth of division between the proud and the happy nations of Europe and the great countries which have come into existence in the New World. 

A nation that forgets its past has no future. 

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

What is adequacy? Adequacy is no standard at all. 

Every man should ask himself each day whether he is not too readily accepting negative solutions. 

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

The Fascists of the future will be the anti-fascists. 

The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion. 

It is the English-speaking nations who, almost alone, keep alight the torch of Freedom. 

Victory was to be bought so dear as to be almost indistinguishable from defeat. 

These two great organisations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some affairs for mutual and general advantage. I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands, and better days. 

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

A love of tradition has never weakened a nation… 

Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman. 

I have had to eat my own words many times, and I have found it a very nourishing diet. 

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

I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand right back and if possible get a pillar between me and the train. I don’t like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second’s action would end everything. A few drops of desperation. 

To meet Roosevelt with all his buoyant sparkle, his iridescence, was like opening a bottle of champagne. 

The arts are essen-tial to any com-plete national life. The State owes it to itself to sus-tain and encour-age them….Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the rev-er-ence and delight which are their due. 

A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life. 

All babies look like me. But then, I look like all babies. 

In finance everything that is agreeable is unsound and everything that is sound is disagreeable. 

I hope I shall never see the day when the Force of Right is deprived of the Right of Force. 

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. 

I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder’. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye and I have waited fifty years, to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench. 

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. 

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

I have always noticed that whenever a radical takes to Imperialism, he catches it in a very acute form. 

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

Socialism is an attack on the right to breathe freely. No socialist system can be established without a political police. 

Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the object worship of the state. 

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. 

It is better to be frightened now than killed hereafter 

Opening amenities are often opening inanities. 

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 English are loth to express their feelings, but in my stall in the choir I could feel the pent-up, passionate emotion, and also the fear of the congregation, not of death or wounds or material loss, but of defeat and the final ruin of Britain. 

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

The dictator, in all his pride, is held in the grip of his party machine. He can go forward; he cannot go back. He must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them. All-strong without, he is all-weak within. 

The United Nations was set up not to get us to heaven, but only to save us from hell. 

Now at last the slowly gathered, long-pent-up fury of the storm broke upon us. Four or five millions of men met each other in the first shock of the most merciless of all the wars of which record has been kept. 

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper-no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point. 

I have not become the Kings First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. 

We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence. 

There is a hush over all Europe, nay, over all the world. Alas! it is the hush of suspense, and in many lands it is the hush of fear. Listen! No, listen carefully, I think I hear somethingyes, there it was quite clear. Dont you hear it? It is the tramp of armies crunching the gravel of the paradegrounds, splashing through rain-soaked fields, the tramp of two million German soldiers and more than a million Italiansgoing on maneuversyes, only on maneuvers! 

Nothing will bring American sympathy along with us so much as American blood shed in the field. 

The Chinese said of themselves several thousand years ago: China is a sea that salts all the waters that flow into it. Theres another Chinese saying about their country which is much more modernit dates only from the fourth century. This is the saying: The tail of China is large and will not be wagged. I like that one. The British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails. It is due to the working of these important forces that I have the honour to be addressing you at this moment. 

If we win, nobody will care. If we lose, there will be nobody to care. 

Judged by every standard which history has applied to Governments, the Soviet Government of Russia is one of the worst tyrannies that has ever existed in the world. It accords no political rights. It rules by terror. It punishes political opinions. It suppresses free speech. It tolerates no newspapers but its own. It persecutes Christianity with a zeal and a cunning never equalled since the times of the Roman Emperors. It is engaged at this moment in trampling down the peoples of Georgia and executing their leaders by hundreds. 

I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my fathers house to believe in democracy. Trust the peoplethat was his message. 

Twice in my lifetime the long arm of destiny has reached across the oceans and involved the entire life and manhood of the United States in a deadly struggle.There was no use in saying We don’t want it; we won 

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, ‘Verify your quotations. 

Ethics evolve naturally, and we trample upon them with laws created by reason and experience. 

Give us the tools, and we will finish the job 

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

We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general. 

What a fool I have been! 

If you are going to go through hell, keep going 

Don’t give your son money. As far as you can afford it, give him horses. 

The substitution of the internal combustion engine for the horse marked a very gloomy milestone in the progress of mankind. 

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. 

I think a curse should rest on me – because I love this war. I know it’s smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment – and yet – I can’t help it – I enjoy every second of it. 

The head cannot take in more than the seat can endure. 

If you are young, and not liberal, then you don’t have a heart. If you are old, and not conservative, then you don’t have a brain. 

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has appeared in the world. 

One ought to be just before one is generous 

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace. 

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. 

If you don’t take change by the hand, it will take you by the throat. 

…Have the stresses of war been as bad to you personally as carrying through the policy of Collective Farms? 

England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame and will get war. 

What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth? 

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

Hess or no Hess, I’m going to watch the Marx Brothers. 

[My ideal of a good dinner] is to discuss good food, and, after this good food has been discussed, to discuss a good topic – with myself the chief conversationalist. 

Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library. 

I am a man of simple tastes-I am quite easily satisfied with the best of everything. 

A day away from Chartwell is a day wasted. 

Just to paint is great fun … Try it if you have not done so – before you die. 

One is quite astonished to find how many things there are in the landscape, and in every object in it, one never noticed before. And this is a tremendous new pleasure and interest which invests every walk or drive with an added object. So many colours on the hillside, each different in shadow and in sunlight; such brilliant reflections in the pool, each a key lower than what they repeat; such lovely lights gilding or silvering surface or outline, all tinted exquisitely with pale colour, rose, orange, green or violet. 

… painting a picture is like fighting a battle; and trying to paint a picture is, I suppose, like trying to fight a battle. It is, if anything, more exciting than fighting it successfully. But the principle is the same. 

Have not Manet and Monet, Cezanne and Matisse, rendered to painting something of the same service which Keats and Shelley gave to poetry after the solemn and ceremonious literary perfections of the eighteenth century? They have brought back to the pictorial art a new draught of joie de vivre; and the beauty of their work is instinct with gaiety, and floats in sparkling air. I do not expect these masters would particularly appreciate my defence, but I must avow an increasing attraction to their work. 

I was shown a picture by Cezanne of a blank wall of a house, which he had made instinct with the most delicate lights and colours. 

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. 

Like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it … And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue – out of charity and out of chivalry … – and said, “Are these toys any good to you? They amuse some people.” 

I feel devoutly thankful to have been born fond of writing. 

To sit at one’s table on a sunny morning, with four clear hours of uninterruptible security, plenty of nice white paper, and a Squeezer pen – that is true happiness. 

English literature is a glorious inheritance which is open to all – there are no barriers, no coupons, and no restrictions. In the English language and in its great writers there are great riches and treasures, of which, of course, the Bible and Shakespeare stand along on the highest platform. 

I have consistently urged my friends to abstain from reading it. 

The Golcondas were considered incomparably the best team in Southern India … [But] we defeated [them] by 9 goals to 3. On succeeding days we made short work of all other opponents, and established the record, never since broken, of winning a first-class tournament within fifty days of landing in India. 

I am writing in one of the Keepers’ Lodges to wh I have returned after stalking & where I am waiting for the Prince of Wales. Quite the best day’s sport I have had in this country – 4 good stags & home early! 

I built with my own hands … a large swimming-pool which was filtered to limpidity and could be heated to supplement our fickle sunshine. 

The tired parts of the mind can be rested and strengthened not merely by rest, but by using other parts. 

Do not criticize your government when out of the country. Never cease to do so when at home 

The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there’s no limit to the power it can generate. 

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship. 

The eagle has ceased to scream, but the parrots will now begin to chatter. The war of the giants is over and the pigmies will now start to squabble. 

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars Englandhe should have said Britain, of coursealways wins one battlethe last. 

Thus, then, on the night of the tenth of May, at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State, which henceforth I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having surrendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs. 

When I warned them [the French] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken. Some chicken! Some neck! 

I was very glad that Mr. Attlee described my speeches in the war as expressing the will not only of Parliament but of the whole nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless and, as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it, and if I found the right words you must remember that I have always earned my living by my pen and by my tongue. It was a nation and race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar. 

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling ones pulse and taking ones temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture. 

The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. 

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. 

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

I had a feeling once about mathematics – that I saw it all… but it was after dinner and I let it go. 

All was there-the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message. 

His name is Rufus II-but the II is silent. 

The poodle [Rufus] ate in the dining room with the rest of the [Churchill] family. A cloth was laid for him on the Persian carpet beside the head of the household, and no one else ate until the butler had served Rufus’s meal. 

Gentleman, I am hardening on this enterprise. I repeat, I am now hardening towards this enterprise. 

We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. 

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.” 

There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is England. 

Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. 

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact. 

You ought to let the Jews have Jerusalem; it was they who made it famous. 

Your day will go the way the corners of your mouth turn. 

Maybe” when it seems the entire world is shouting “no! 

A polo handicap is a persons ticket to the world. 

The English never draw a line without blurring it. 

Science should be on tap, not on top. 

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party 

In war it does not matter who is right, but who is left. 

A sheep in sheep’s clothing. 

He looks like a female llama who has been surprised in the bath. 

If you wanted nothing done at all, Balfour was the man for the job. 

Which brings me to my conclusion upon Free Will and Predestination, namely – let the reader mark it – that they are identical. 

Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat. 

I’m so bored with it all. 

The only guide to a man’s conscience, the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. 

Immense deposits of kimmeridge clay, containing the oil-bearing bands or seams, stretch across England from Dorsetshire to Lincolnshire. [An early political recognition of the native resource. The Geological Survey had identified the inflammable oil shale in reports since at least 1888.] 

We used to be a source of fuel; we are increasingly becoming a sink. These supplies of foreign liquid fuel are no doubt vital to our industry, but our ever-increasing dependence upon them ought to arouse serious and timely reflection. The scientific utilisation, by liquefaction, pulverisation and other processes, or our vast and magnificent deposits of coal, constitutes a national object of prime importance. 

The English know how to make the best of things. Their so-called muddling through is simply skill at dealing with the inevitable. 

The tank was originally invented to clear a way for the infantry in the teeth of machine-gun fire. Now it is the infantry who will have to clear a way for the tanks. 

War, which used to be cruel and magnificent has now become cruel and squalid. 

Air superiority is the ultimate expression of military power. 

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. 

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge. Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all. 

Writing is an adventure. 

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. 

Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime ministers have never yet been invested. 

Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one. 

Do not trust any statistics you did not fake yourself. 

The press is easier to strangle than to look in the eyes. 

One time he was asked if he believed in an afterlife. After a moment’s hesitation he said no, that he thought there was only “some kind of velvety cool blackness,” adding then: “Of course, I admit I may be wrong. It is conceivable that I might well be reborn as a Chinese coolie. In such case I should lodge a protest.” 

If you want a good argument against democracy, spend five minutes with a voter. 

All this contains much that is obviously true, and much that is relevant; unfortunately, what is obviously true is not relevant, and what is relevant is not obviously true. 

The gov-ern-ment had to choose between war and shame. They chose shame. They will get war too. 

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

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 

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

The flame of Christian ethics is still our highest guide. 

There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided. 

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. 

It is no use dealing with illusions and make-believes. We must look at the facts. The world … is too dangerous for anyone to be able to afford to nurse illusions. We must look at realities. 

A good party man puts his party above himself and his country above his party. 

An efficient and a successful administration manifests itself equally in small as in great matters. 

Neville Chamberlain looked at foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe. 

I had no idea of the enormous and unquestionably helpful part that humbug plays in the social life of great peoples dwelling in a state of democratic freedom. 

Mr. Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right. 

They [the Labour Party] are not fit to manage a whelk stall. 

A world united is better than a world divided, but a world divided is better than a world destroyed. 

I have lived seventy-eight years without hearing of bloody places like Cambodia. 

Do not let us speak of darker days, let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days-the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race. 

History unfolds itself by strange and unpredictable paths. We have little control over the future; and none at all over the past. 

History’s villains are more easily recognized in retrospect. In an article published in 1935 and reprinted in 1937, Winston Churchill expressed a curious ambivalence towards the German chancellor prior to the outbreak of war: We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilization will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the great Germanic nation. . . . 

If the present tries to sit in judgment of the past, it will lose the future. 

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

They had bombed London, whether on purpose or not, and the British people and London especially should know that we could hit back. It would be good for the morale of us all. 

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land . . . The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing . . . I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive. 

May it not also be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen? There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past. 

. . . 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. We must be able to overwhelm them by this means, without which I do not see a way through. 

The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. Therefore our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery in the Air. The Fighters are our salvation . . . but the Bombers alone provide the means of victory. . . . In no other way at present visible can we hope to overcome the immense military power of Germany. 

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. 

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. 

You see these dictators up on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. They’re afraid of words and thought. … They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words. … A state of society where men may not speak their mind – where children denounce their parents to the police – where a businessman or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinion. Such a state of society cannot long endure if it is continually in contact with the healthy outside world. 

The air is an extremely dangerous, jealous and exacting mistress. Once under the spell most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always old age. Even those masters and princes of aerial fighting, the survivors of fifty mortal duels in the high air who have come scatheless through the War and all its perils, have returned again and again to their love and perished too often in some ordinary commonplace flight undertaken for pure amusement. 

The cost of solving the Comet mystery must be reckoned neither in money nor in manpower. 

Never give in, never! Be it concerning large things or small things, never, never, never! 

The definition of courage is going from defeat to defeat with enthusiasm. 

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. 

What kind of people do they [the Japanese] think we are? 

Vast and fearsome as the human scene has become, personal contact of the right people, in the right places, at the right time, may yet have a potent and valuable part to play in the cause of peace which is in our hearts. 

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. 

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. 

Things do not get better by being left alone. 

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

I am not sure I should have dared to start; but I am sure that I should not have dared to stop. 

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

There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away. 

Politics is more dangerous than war, for in war you are only killed once. 

It is my belief, you cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you understand the most amusing. 

All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes. 

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

When Iraq becomes strong enough in our opinion to stand alone, we shall be in a position to state that our task has been fulfilled, and that Iraq is an independent sovereign state. But this cannot be said while we are forced year after year to spend very large sums of money on helping the Iraqi government to defend itself and maintain order. 

My greatest good fortune in a life of brilliant experiences has been to find you, and to lead my life with you. I don’t feel far away from you out here at all. I feel very near in my heart; and also I feel that the nearer I get to honour, the nearer I am to you. 

There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called a blessed act of oblivion. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past. 

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

At the depths of that dusty soul there is nothing but abject surrender. 

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

The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself. 

Nancy, if I were your husband I’d drink it. 

We shape our homes and then our homes shape us. 

The Almighty in His infinite wisdom did not see fit to create Frenchmen in the image of Englishmen. 

It is not alone that property, in all its forms, is struck at, but that liberty, in all its forms, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of socialism. 

All I want is compliance with my wishes, after reasonable discussion. 

I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was a unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony. 

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one’s pulse and taking one’s temperature. 

A man who gets the reputation of rising at dawn can sleep to noon. 

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

By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. . . . I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence – which is a noble thing. Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat. 

There comes a special moment in everyone’s life, a moment for which that person was born. That special opportunity, when he seizes it, will fulfill his mission – a mission for which he is uniquely qualified. In that moment, he will find greatness. It is his finest hour. 

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

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. 

Advertising mourishes 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. 

The poor girl does not know how to have a conversation. Unfortunately, she does know how to speak. 

We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official, a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges 

These are great days. 

Before the war it had seemed incredible that such terrors and slaughters, even if they began, could last more than a few months. After the first two years it was difficult to believe that they would ever end. 

I like things to happen, and if they don’t happen I like to make them happen. 

We will mete out to the Germans the measure and more than the measure that they have meted out to us. We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst and we will do our best. 

We should lay aside every hindrance and endeavour by uniting the whole force and spirit of our people to raise again a great British nation standing up before all the world; for such a nation, rising in its ancient vigour, can even at this hour save civilization. 

I myself find waiting more tiring than action. 

Luckily … there were Zulus and Afghans, also the Dervishes in the Soudan. Some of these might, if they were well-disposed, ‘put up a show’ some day. 

For the first time I heard shots fired in anger, heard bullets strike flesh or whistle through the air. 

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. 

Next time I go into the action – I shall command a hundred men – & possibly I may bring off some coup. Besides I shall have some other motive for taking chances than merely “love of adventure”. 

I’m finished … I’m done. What I want above all things is to take some active part in beating the Germans … I’d go out to the Front at once. 

Here life itself, life at its best and healthiest, awaits the caprice of the bullet. Let us see the development of the day. All else may stand over, perhaps for ever. Existence is never so sweet as when it is at hazard. 

It always looks so easy to solve problems by taking the line of least resistance. 

You never can tell whether bad luck may not after all turn out to be good luck. 

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. 

God alone knows how great it is. All I hope is that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best. 

We shall go forward together. The road upwards is stony. There are upon our journey dark and dangerous valleys through which we have to make and fight our way. But it is sure and certain that if we persevere – and we shall persevere – we shall come through these dark and dangerous valleys into a sunlight broader and more genial and more lasting than mankind has ever known. 

Danger gathers upon our path. We cannot afford – we have no right – to look back. We must look forward… The stronger the advocate of monarchical principle a man may be, the more zealously he must now endeavor to fortify the Throne and to give to His Majesty’s successor that strength which can only come from the love of a united nation and Empire. 

I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget… we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat… All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness… We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that… Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. 

Nowadays we are assailed by a chorus of horrid threats. The Nazi government exudes through every neutral state inside information about the frightful vengeance they are going to wreak upon us, and they also bawl it around the world by their propaganda machinery. If words could kill, we shall be dead already. 

I feel like an aeroplane at the end of its flight, in the dusk, with the petrol running out, in search of a safe landing. 

If I stay on for the time being, bearing the burden at my age, it is not because of love for power or office. I have had an ample share of both. If I stay it is because I have a feeling that I may, through things that have happened, have an influence about what I care about above all else, the building of a sure and lasting peace. 

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

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. 

Danger gathers upon our path. We cannot afford – we have no right – to look back. We must look forward 

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. 

There is no doubt the charge was an awful gamble and that no normal precautions were possible. The issue as far as I was concerned had to be left to Fortune or to God – or to whatever may decide these things. I am content and shall not complain. 

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

When danger is far off we may think of our weakness; when it is near we must not forget our strength. 

I’m bored with it all. Before slipping into a coma. He died 9 days later. 

“I hope, sir, that I will shoot your picture on your hundredth birthday.” I don’t see why not, young man. You look reasonably fit and healthy. 

When I was younger I made it a rule never to take strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast. 

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

Time passes swiftly, but is it not joyous to see how great and growing is the treasure we have gathered together, amid the storms and stresses of so many eventful and to millions tragic and terrible years? 

You must put your head into the lion’s mouth if the performance is to be a success. 

This fulfils my ambition. I still have my father’s robe as Chancellor. I shall be proud to serve you in this splendid office. 

It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all. 

The day may dawn when fair play, love for one’s fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair. 

… 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. 

I play for high stakes and given an audience – there is no act too daring or too noble. 

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

I expect you will find that change is the best kind of rest. 

Sunshine is my quest. 

Unless some effective world supergovernment for the purpose of preventing war can be set up … the prospects for peace and human progress are dark ….If …. it is found possible to build a world organization of irresistible force and inviolable authority for the purpose of securing peace, there are no limits to the blessings which all men enjoy and share. 

Unless we establish some form of world government, it will not be possible for us to avert a World War III in the future. 

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. 

Our dog chases people on a bike. We’ve had to take it off him. 

Good and great are seldom in the same man. 

Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision. 

My education was interrupted only by my schooling. 

It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. 

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

Without execution, thinking is mere idleness. 

I am sorry to have made such a long speech, but I did not have time to write a shorter one. 

Don’t be content to be the chip off the old block – be the old block itself. 

Two nations divided by a common language. 

The V sign is the symbol of the unconquerable will of the occupied territories, and a portent of the fate awaiting the Nazi tyranny. 

Victory is the beautiful, bright-colored flower. Transport is the stem without which it could never have blossomed. 

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

Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it’s the best system we have. 

Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut. 

Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash. 

Nature will not be admired by proxy. 

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. 

Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely. Light and colour, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end of the day. 

The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery. 

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

Things don’t happen to me. I happen to things! 

It is impossible to obtain a conviction for sodomy from an English jury. Half of them don’t believe that it can physically be done, and the other half are doing it. 

Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions. 

Never give in, never give in, never give in. 

Haven’t you learned yet that I put something more than whisky into my speeches. 

Out of the depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind. 

I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself 

Churchill: “Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?” Socialite: “My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course… ” Churchill: “Would you sleep with me for five pounds?” Socialite: “Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!” Churchill: “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price 

Say what you have to say and the first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending – sit down. 

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. 

Those whose work and pleasure are one… are… Fortune’s favoured children. 

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. 

I wonder whether any other generation has seen such astounding revolutions of data and values as those through which we have lived. Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent and vital, has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened. 

Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are billed to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. 

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. 

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. 

I am too busy. I have not time for worry. 

Danger, if met head on, can be nearly halved 

I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what they do. Behavior never lies. 

There never will be enough for everything while the world goes on. The more that is given the more there will be needed. 

Those who serve supreme causes must not consider what they can get but what they can give. 

You must look at facts, because they look at you. 

Nothing is perfect on the human stage… 

How often in life must one be content with what one can get! 

Nothing should be done for spite’s sake. 

One can usually put one’s thoughts better in one’s own words. 

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

No one should waste a day. 

You ask what the aim is? I tell you it is victory – total victory. 

A pessimist sees problems in opportunities whereas an optimist sees opportunities in problems. 

Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low calibre & men of straw. They will have sweet tongues & silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power & India will be lost in political squabbles. A day would come when even air & water would be taxed in India. 

Criticism is easy; achievement is difficult. 

You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war. 

I hate nobody except Hitler-and that is professional. 

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? 

Meet success like a gentleman; disaster like a man. 

If you are going through hell just keep going 

Islam to a man is like rabies to a dog 

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that platitudes, smooth words, and timid policies offer a path to safety. 

Don’t argue about the difficulties. The difficulties will argue for themselves. 

I am all for your using machines, but do not let them use you. 

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory !! 

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time. 

When you feel you cannot continue in your position for another minute, and all that is in human power has been done, that is the moment when the enemy is most exhausted, and when one step forward will give you the fruits of the struggle you have borne 

The Pashtun tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian Every large house is a real feudal fortress….Eve ry family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud….Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid. 

With opportunity comes responsibility. 

Never give up. Never give up. Never give up. 

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

Money is like manure, its only good if you spread it around. 

The rest and the spell of sleep in the middle of the day refresh the human frame far more than a long night. We were not made by Nature to work, or even to play, from eight o’clock in the morning till midnight. We throw a strain upon our system which is unfair and improvident. For every purpose of business or pleasure, mental or physical, we ought to break our days and our marches into two. 

Everyone threw the blame on me … they nearly always do. I suppose … they think I shall be able to bear it best. 

Apt analogies are among the most formidable weapons of the rhetorician. 

Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear – I fear greatly – the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar, even more loudly, even more widely. 

Hatred plays the same part in government as acid in chemistry. 

I am a sporting man. I always like to give trains and aeroplanes a fair chance of getting away. 

I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations. I am sorry, however, that he has not been mellowed by the great success that has attended him. The whole world would rejoice to see the Hitler of peace and tolerance, and nothing would adorn his name in world history so much as acts of magnanimity and of mercy and of pity to the forlorn and friendless, to the weak and poor…. Let this great man search his own heart and conscience before he accuses anyone of being a warmonger. 

I neither want it [brandy] nor need it, but I should think it pretty hazardous to interfere with the ineradicable habit of a lifetime. 

I now began for the first time to envy those young cubs at the university who had fine scholars to tell them what was what; professors who had devoted their lives to mastering and focusing ideas in every branch of learning; who were eager to distribute the treasures they had gathered before they were overtaken by the night. But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man’s Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play. 

Life is a test and this world a place of trial. Always the problems – or it may be the same problem – will be presented to every generation in different forms. 

Life is a test and this world a place of trial. 

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. 

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

Soviet Union foreign policy is a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma, and the key is Russian nationalism. 

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. 

The further back I look, the further forward I can see. 

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 very first thing the President [Truman] did was to show me the new Presidential Seal, which he had just redesigned. He explained, ‘The seal has to go everywhere the President goes. It must be displayed upon the lectern when he speaks. The eagle used to face the arrows but I have re-designed it so that it now faces the olive branches … what do you think?’ I said, ‘Mr. President, with the greatest respect, I would prefer the American eagle’s neck to be on a swivel so that it could face the olive branches or the arrows, as the occasion might demand.’ 

To secure your historical standing, be sure you are the first to write about it. 

We shall defend every village, every town and every city. The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army; and we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved. 

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

There are plenty of good ideas, if only they can be backed with the power of action. 

The only way a man can remain consistent amid changing circumstances is to change with them while preserving the same dominating purpose. 

There is, therefore, wisdom in reserving one’s decisions as long as possible and until all the facts and forces that will be potent at the moment are revealed. 

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. 

I do not see any other way of realizing our hopes about World Organization in five or six days. Even the Almighty took seven. 

Go into the sunshine and be happy with what you see. 

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

The person must be blind, indeed, who can not see, that here on earth a great project, a great plan, is executed, may work on the realization of which we participate as faithful servants. 

Rules were made for fools to follow and wise men to be guided by. 

Listing your personal milestones is like storing a pocketful of sunshine for a rainy day. Sometimes our best is simply not enough…. We have to do what is required. 

We have no lasting friends, no lasting enemies, only lasting interests. 

My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars. 

I love learning, but hate being taught. 

Courage is the ability to go from failure to failure with enthusiasm. 

Are you an action-oriented, take-charge person interested in exciting new challenges? As director of a major public-sector organization, you will manage a large armed division and interface with other senior executives in a team-oriented, multinational initiative in the global marketplace. Successful candidate will have above-average oral-presentation skills 

Manifest destiny was on the march, and it was unfortunate that Mexico stood in the path. 

I’m too busy. I have no time for worry. 

Writing … it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant. 

It is not always possible to have everything go as one likes. In working with allies, it sometimes happens that they develop opinions of their own 

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. 

It is easier to give directions than advice, and more agreeable to have the right to act, even in a limited sphere, than the privilege to talk at large. 

Any clever person can make plans for winning a war if he has no responsibility for carrying them out. 

The American Constitution declares ‘All men are born equal.’ The British Socialist Party add: ‘All men must be kept equal’. 

When someone says to me, Ugh, you smoke. I reply, Ugh, you’re ugly. I can quit smoking. 

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

Diversity is the one true thing we all have in common… Celebrate it every day. 

You gotta have some balls to be a female PM in England 

Lots of folks are forced to skimp to support a government that won’t. 

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go. Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential. 

The monarchy is so extraordinarily useful. When Britain wins a battle she shouts, “God save the Queen”; when she loses, she votes down the prime minister. 

Free speech carries with it the evil of all foolish, unpleasant venomous things that are said but, on the whole, we would rather lump them than do away with them. 

Personally I think that private property has a right to be defended. Our civilisation is built up on property, and can only be defended by private property. 

Are you insinuating that I am a purveyor of terminological inexactitudes? 

The Russian Bolsheviks have discovered that truth does not matter so long as there is reiteration. They have no difficulty whatever in countering a fact by a lie which, if repeated often enough and loudly enough, becomes accepted by the people. 

When you’re 20 you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place. You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. 

We need to be strong in order to avoid war; and to win. A politician looks forward only to the next election. A statesman looks forward to the next generation. Any person who is over 30 and is not a conservative, has no brains… 

No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanly directed in the first instance. 

Now that we are, as you say, ‘in the same boat,’ would it not be wise for us to have another conference … and the sooner the better. 

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

Is it possible to get another key? I think I’ve left mine in the room. 

We are all worms. However, I like to think I’m a glow worm 

Personal initiative, competitive selection, the profit motive, corrected by failure and the infinite process of good housekeeping and the personal ingenuity-here constitute the life of a free society. 

I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. 

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. 

Success in life is the ability to move from one mistake to another without loosing enthusiasm. 

I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as “The Boneless Wonder”. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye and I have waited fifty years, to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench. 

Why should there not be a European group which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this turbulent and mighty continent? And why should it not take its rightful place with other great groupings and help to shape the onward destinies of men? 

If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the happiness, the prosperity, and the glory which its 300,000,000 or 400,000,000 people would enjoy. 

Nothing is won without enthusiasm. 

This truth may be unfashionable, unpalatable, no doubt unpopular, but, if it is the truth, the story of mankind shows that war was universal and unceasing for millions of years before armaments were invented or armies organized. Indeed, the lucid intervals of peace and order only occurred in human history after armaments in the hands of strong governments have come into being, and civilization in every age has been nursed only in cradles guarded by superior weapons and superior discipline. 

The acts we engage in for appeasment today, we will have to remedy at far greater cost and remorse tomorrow. 

It is of no account; after all, the old bird does not fly far from his nest. 

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

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. 

Millions who could not follow closely or accurately the main events of the War looked day after day in the papers for the fortunes of Mafeking, and when finally the news of its relief was flashed throughout the world, the streets of London became impassable, and the floods of sterling, cockney patriotism were released in such a deluge of unbridled, delirious joy as was never witnessed again till Armistace Night, 1918…. 

One cannot leap a chasm in two jumps. 

I do not believe there is the slightest chance of war with Japan in our lifetime. The Japanese are our allies…. Japan is at the other end of the world. She cannot menace our vital security in any way…. War with Japan is not a possibility which any reasonable government need take into account. 

If you recognize anyone it does not mean you like them. 

It happens that once we learn a thing, the motivation to keep it up grows and expands further as well. If you’re going through hell, keep going. 

An iron curtain has descended over Europe. 

The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. 

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

It is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything. 

You leave out God, and you substitute the devil. 

Failure should never go to heart and success should never go to head, both makes a person to fall in life. 

Our free trade plan is quite simple. We say that every [citizen] shall have the right to buy whatever he wants, wherever he wants, at his own good pleasure, without restriction or discouragement from the state. 

If you find a job you love, you’ll never work again… 

Great success always comes at the risk of enormous failure. 

Talking death seriously is one of the tragedies of youth 

Beware of driving men to desperation. Even a cornered rat is dangerous. 

Do what you like, but like what you do. 

No one ever came to grief-except honorable grief-through riding horses. No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle. Young men have often been ruined through owning horses, or through backing horses, but never through riding them; unless of course they break their necks, which, taken at a gallop, is a very good death to die. 

The trade unions are a long-established and essential part of our national life. We take our stand by these pillars of our British society as it has gradually developed and evolved itself, of the right of individual labouring men to adjust their wages and conditions by collective bargaining, including the right to strike. 

It is bad for a nation when it is without faith. 

To try to be safe everywhere is to be strong nowhere. 

Never flinch, never weary, never despair. 

Wealth, taste and leisure can bring many things but they do not bring happiness. 

In my experience of large enterprises, I have found it is often a mistake to try to settle everything at once. 

We are plunged in a long and grievous struggle. But all will come right if we all work together to the end. 

There is only one answer to defeat and that is victory. 

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas… I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes… It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gases; gases can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected. 

Even fools are right sometimes. 

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

Put together a seaman, soldier and airman and what do you get? The sum of all fears. 

Never stand so high upon a principle that you cannot lower it to suit the circumstances. 

Without victory there is no survival! 

Leadership is the intelligent use of power. 

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

We make our buildings and afterwards they make us. They regulate the course of our lives. 

To improve is to change. 

This is a war of the unknown warriors; but let all strive without failing in faith or in duty, and the dark curse of Hitler will be lifted from our age. 

We would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved. 

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. 

Most of the world’s work is done by people who don’t feel very well. 

With the end of the Victorian era, we passed into what I feel I must call the terrible 20th century 

My tastes are simple. I like only the very best. 

Courage is the greatest virtue because it guarantees all the rest. 

Men often stumble onto the truth but then quickly dust themselves off and hurry away. 

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. 

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

My mother always seemed to me like a fairy princess: a radiant being possessed of limitless riches and power. She shone for me like the evening star. I loved her dearly. 

It was my ambition all of my life to be master of the spoken word. 

If you travel the earth, you will find it is largely divided into two classes of people-people who say ‘I wonder why such and such is not done” and people who say “Now who is going to prevent me from doing that thing?” 

We Shall come through! We cannot tell when, we cannot tell how, but we shall come through. 

It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than it is to apply them. 

The question which we must ask ourselves is not whether we like or do not like what is going on, but what we are going to do about it. 

Don’t deliver an essay with so many points. No one can absorb it. Just say one thing… Of course, you can say the point in many different ways over and over again with different illustrations. 

It is sheer laziness not compressing thought into a reasonable space. 

There is no purpose in living where there is nothing to do. 

It is wonderful how well men can keep secrets they have not been told. 

Let us set up a standard around which the brave and the loyal can rally. 

Peace will not be preserved by pious sentiments. 

People who are not prepared to do unpopular things and defy the clamor of the multitude are not fit to be ministers in time of difficulty. 

[The Balkans] produce more history than they can consume. 

I have had a number of threatening letters each week, some telling me the actual time and method of my death, and I don’t like it. 

Fancy living in one of these streets, never seeing anything beautiful, never eating anything savoury, never saying anything clever! 

If a woman has “It,” she doesn’t need anything else; but if she doesn’t have “It,” it doesn’t matter what else she has. 

I am not a bit afraid of Siegfried Sassoon. That man can think. I am afraid only of people who cannot think. 

[The politician] is asked to stand, he wants to sit, and he is expected to lie. 

Nobody wants to intervene in Russian affairs. Russia is a very large country, a very old country, a very disagreeable country inhabited by immense numbers of ignorant people largely possessed of lethal weapons and in a state of extreme disorder. Also Russia is a long way off. 

[Much] as war attracts me and fascinates my mind with its tremendous situations, I feel more deeply every year . . . what vile and wicked folly and barbarism it all is. 

Preparation is – if not the key to genius – then at least the key to sounding like a genius. 

With integrity, nothing else counts. Without integrity, nothing else counts. 

I’d rather argue against a hundred idiots, than have one agree with me. 

Russian may seem narrow-minded, impudent, or even stupid people, but can only pray for those who are against them. 

Putting prepositions at the end of sentences is something up with which we cannot put. 

There’s no such thing as a good tax. 

The only guide to 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, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor. 

Dear citizen, if you were my love, I’d stole your money!’ Admin if you were my love, I would ask you for divorce and spousal support! 

You haven’t learned life’s lesson very well if you haven’t noticed that you can give the tone or colour, or decide the reaction you want of people in advance. It’s unbelievable simply. If you want them to take an interest in you, take an interest in them first. If you want to make them nervous, become nervous yourself…It’s as simple as that. People will treat you as you treat them. It’s no secret. Look about you. You can prove it with the next person you meet. 

I never slept as soundly as the night following Pearl Harbor. For I knew that The American Race would now be entering the war and it would never be the same. 

We make our buildings, and then our buildings make and shape us. 

The government had to choose between war and shame. They chose shame. They will get war too. 

The arts are essential to any complete national life. The State owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them….Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due. 

Already by 1900 I could boast I had written as many books as Moses. 

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

There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained. Having a family guarantees that you have a built in support system, and although that support system may not always be what you want it to be, when it comes down to the wire, your family will love you and stand behind you, no matter what. 

I did not like the man [Niels Bohr] when you showed him to me, with his hair all overhis head… 

Unless some effective supranational government can be set up and brought quickly into action, the prospects of peace and human progress are dark and doubtful. 

Success comes from continuing to strive, fail and learn without losing enthusiasm. 

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

There are bitter weeds in England. 

We must recognise that we have a great inheritance in our possession, which represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries; that there is not one of our simple uncounted rights today for which better men than we are have not died on the scaffold or the battlefield. We have not only a great treasure; we have a great cause. Are we taking every measure within our power to defend that cause? 

Some civil servants are neither servants nor civil. 

Islam is more dangerous in a man than rabies in a dog. 

Old men make war, young men fight and die 

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. 

The struggle which is now beginning between the Zionist and Bolshevik Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people. 

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward. 

All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope. 

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. 

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time. 

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. 

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. 

There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true. 

Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash. 

We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire… Give us the tools and we will finish the job. 

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. 

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. 

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep them in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization. 

We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official, a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges. 

Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt… 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. 

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong-these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history. 

Americans always try to do the right thing after they’ve tried everything else. 

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns. 

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

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time. 

This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put. 

We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm. 

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. 

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party. 

It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty’s government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptation of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude. 

Business carried on as usual during alterations on the map of Europe. 

By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys…. I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence- which is a noble thing. 

I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder.’ My parents judged that the spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing for my youthful eyes, and I have waited 50 years to see the boneless wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench. 

Their sweat, their tears, their blood bedewed the endless plain. 

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. 

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old. 

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Commonwealth and its Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ 

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. 

The people of London with one voice would say to Hitler: ‘You have committed every crime under the sun…. We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst-and we will do our best. 

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 honor and good sense. 

Do not let us speak of darker days; let us rather speak of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days-the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race. 

When I warned them [the French] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, ‘In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.’ Some chicken! Some neck! 

We make this wide encircling movement in the Mediterranean, having for its primary object the recovery of the command of that vital sea, but also having for its object the exposure of the underbelly of the Axis, especially Italy, to heavy attack. 

On the night of May 10, 1941, with one of the last bombs of the last serious raid our House of Commons was destroyed by the violence of the enemy, and we have now to consider whether we should build it up again, and how, and when. We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us. 

In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill. 

On the night of the tenth of May [1940], at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State, which henceforth I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having surrendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs. 

It may almost be said, ‘Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat. 

It is not easy to see how things could be worsened by a parley at the summit, if such a thing were possible. 

Naval tradition? Monstrous. Nothing but rum, sodomy, prayers, and the lash. 

A modest man who has a good deal to be modest about. 

[Of Bernard Montgomery:] In defeat unbeatable: in victory unbearable. 

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. 

[On his portrait:] I look as if I was having a difficult stool. 

As far as I can see you have used every cliche except ‘God is Love’ and ‘Please adjust your dress before leaving. 

This is the kind of pedantic nonsense up with which I will not put! 

[Lady Nancy Astor: If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee. Churchill:] And if I were your husband I would drink it. 

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 awestriking and irresistible, we learn that we are spirits, not animals. 

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual. 

We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance [Dunkirk] the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations. 

[Political skill] 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. 

It fell to me in these coming days and months to express their sentiments on suitable occasions. This I was able to do, because they were mine also. There was a white glow, overpowering, sublime, which ran through our island from end to end. 

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper – no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point. 

[In war] the latest refinements of science are linked with the cruelties of the Stone Age. 

It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic. 

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. 

Will the shutting out of foreign goods increase the total amount of wealth in this country? Can foreign nations grow rich at our expense by selling us goods under cost price? Can a people tax themselves into prosperity? Can a man stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle? 

For my own part I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities which he excites among his opponents. I have always set myself not merely to relish but to deserve thoroughly their censure. 

Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be made like this? 

[Golf] is like chasing a quinine pill around a cow pasture. 

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 the glory of the climb. 

I am most anxious that in dealing with matters which every Member knows are extremely delicate matters, I should not use any phrase or expression which would cause offence to our friends and Allies on the Continent or across the Atlantic Ocean. 

The choice was clearly open: crush them with vain and unstinted force, or try to give them what they want. These were the only alternatives, and though each had ardent advocates, most people were unprepared for either. Here indeed was the Irish spectre – horrid and inexorcisable. 

No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle. 

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

Make your minds perfectly clear that if ever you let loose upon us again a general strike, we will loose upon you – another British Gazette. 

If I had been an Italian, I am sure I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism. 

She shone for me like the Evening Star. I loved her dearly – but at a distance. 

I then had one of the three or four long intimate conversations with him which are all I can boast. 

You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. 

It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer of the type well-known in the East, now posing as a fakir, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor. 

We know that he [Ramsay MacDonald] has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest number of words into the into the smallest amount of thought. 

One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations. 

We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilisation will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the Great Germanic nation. 

Mr. Gandhi has gone very high in my esteem since he stood up for the untouchables… I do not care whether you are more or less loyal to Great Britain… Tell Mr. Gandhi to use the powers that are offered and make the thing a success. 

Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened. 

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. 

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, ‘it is the quality which guarantees all others. 

Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry. 

Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonour. They chose dishonour. They will have war. 

Every morn brought forth a noble chance, and every chance brought forth a noble knight. 

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. 

Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. 

The hour has come; kill the Hun. 

I must point out… that the British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst, and like to be told that they are very likely to get much worse in the future and must prepare themselves for further reverses. 

We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy. 

When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken. Some chicken! Some neck! 

I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. 

The maxim ‘Nothing avails but perfection’ may be spelt shorter: ‘Paralysis. 

By its sudden collapse,… the proud German army has once again proved the truth of the saying, ‘The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet’. 

I have nothing to add to the reply which has already been sent. 

I hate nobody except Hitler – and that is professional. 

We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us. 

The object of presenting medals, stars, and ribbons is to give pride and pleasure to those who have deserved them. At the same time a distinction is something which everybody does not possess. If all have it it is of less value… A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow. 

A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward… Let us have no fear of the future. 

Meeting Roosevelt was like uncorking your first bottle of champagne. 

When I was a young subaltern in the South African War, the water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable we had to put a bit of whiskey in it. By diligent effort I learned to like it. 

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory…. From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. 

We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward cross the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past. 

Is there any need for further floods of agony? Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable? Let there be justice, mercy and freedom. The people have only to will it, and all will achieve their hearts’ desire. 

There is less there than meets the eye. 

When I am abroad I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the Government of my country. I make up for lost time when I am at home. 

All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: Freedom; Justice; Honour; Duty; Mercy; Hope. 

Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. 

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history. 

In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will. 

Their horse cavalry, of which they had twelve brigades, charged valiantly against the swarming tanks and armoured cars but could not harm them with their swords and lances. 

I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. 

Baldwin, Stanley… confesses putting party before country, 169-70;… 

The reason for having diplomatic relations is not to confer a compliment, but to secure a convenience. 

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

Some people did not like this ceremonious style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite. 

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, Verify your quotations. 

Let me have the best solution worked out. Don’t argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves. 

Of course, when you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise. 

By noon it was clear that the Socialists would have a majority. At luncheon my wife said to me, ‘It may well be a blessing in disguise.’ I replied, ‘At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised. 

But now let me return to my theme of the many changes that have taken place since I was last here. There is a jocular saying: ‘To improve is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often.’ I had to use that once or twice in my long career. 

Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal. 

For myself, I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use being anything else. 

It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required. 

I am a sporting man. I always give them a fair chance to get away. 

Keep England White is a good slogan. 

This Treasury paper, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read. 

The day may dawn when fair play, love for one’s fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair. 

We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glow-worm. 

Thus ended the great American Civil War, which upon the whole must be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts of which till then there was record. 

The picture rises before us vivid and bright: the finely carved, dragon-shaped prow; the high, curving stern; the long row of shields, black and yellow alternately, ranged along the sides; the gleam of steel; the scent of murder. 

Civilization had been restored to the Island. But now the political fabric which nurtured it was about to be overthrown. Hitherto strong men armed had kept the house. Now a child, a weakling, a vacillator, a faithless, feckless creature, succeeded to the warrior throne. 

It is vain to recount further the catalogue of miseries. In earlier ages such horrors remain unknown because unrecorded. Just enough flickering light plays upon this infernal scene to give us the sense of its utter desolation and hopeless wretchedness and cruelty. 

Mr. Chamberlain loves the working man, he loves to see him work. 

He is like a female llama surprised in her bath. 

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

I am writing in one of the Keepers’ Lodges to wh I have returned after stalking & where I am waiting for the Prince of Wales. Quite the best day’s sport I have had in this country – 4 good stags & home early! 

I have worked very hard with Nehru. I told him he should be the light of Asia, to show all those millions how they can shine out, instead of accepting the darkness of Communism. 

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

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge. 

Although prepared for martyrdom, I prefer that it be postponed. 

A hopeful disposition is not the sole qualification to be a prophet. 

They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. 

A cat will look down to a man. A dog will look up to a man. But a pig will look you straight in the eye and see his equal. 

The Americans will always do the right thing… after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives. 

Always remember, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. 

In my belief: you cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you also understand the most amusing. 

I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give lion’s roar. 

Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into 3 classes: those who are billed to death, those who are worried to death and those who are bored to death. 

It is a gaping wound, whenever one touches it and removes the bandages and plasters of daily life. 

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

Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valor our only shield. 

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose. 

Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is – the strong horse that pulls the whole cart. 

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

We must have a better word than ‘prefabricated’. Why not ‘ready-made’? 

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour. 

Tell them from me they are unloading history. 

Experts should be on tap but never on top. 

The grass grows green on the battlefield, but never on the scaffold. 

Do not criticize your government when out of the country. Never cease to do so when at home. 

I said that the world must be made safe for at least fifty years. If it was only for fifteen to twenty years then we should have betrayed our soldiers. 

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

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

The stone age may return on the gleaming wings of science. 

If you have 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law. 

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves. 

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

Half my lifetime I have earned my living by selling words, and I hope thoughts. 

What was gunpowder? Trivial. What was electricity? Meaningless. The atomic bomb is the Second Coming in wrath. 

Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant. 

You may try to destroy all the wealth and find that all you have done is increase poverty. 

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

Any 20 year-old who isn’t a liberal doesn’t have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn’t a conservative doesn’t have a brain. 

It is important when you haven’t got any ammunition to have a butt on your rifle. 

It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and rapidly as folly. 

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it. 

Say what you have to say and first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending; sit down. 

One voyage to India is enough; the others are merely repletion. 

By being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverest boys… I got into my bones the essential structure of the normal British sentence – which is a noble thing. 

So they told me how Mr. Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right. 

I shall always be glad to have seen it for the same reason Papa gave for being glad to have seen Lisbon namely, that it will be unnecessary ever to see it again. 

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

Although present on the occasion, I have no clear recollection of the events leading up to it. 

In war you do not have to be nice – you only have to be right. 

Working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays… are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation. 

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. 

I also hope that I sometimes suggested to the lion the right place to use his claws. 

I am bored with it all. 

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. 

Everyone threw the blame on me. I have noticed that they nearly always do. I suppose it is because they think I shall be able to bear it best. 

There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table. 

Death came very easily to her. She had lived such an innocent and loving life of service to others and held such a simple faith, that she had no fears at all and did not seem to mind very much. 

Nothing recalls the past so potently as a smell. 

Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling along. Let it roll. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands and better days. 

The War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of Fate. 

We must just KBO (‘Keep Buggering On’). 

He is one of those orators of whom it was well said, ‘Before they get up they do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying; and when they sit down, they do not know what they have said’. 

It is a remarkable comment on our affairs that the former prime minister of a great sovereign state should thus be received as an honorary citizen of another. 

The monarchy is so extraordinarily useful. When Britain wins a battle she shouts, God save the Queen; when she loses, she votes down the prime minister. 

If it is a blessing, it is certainly very well disguised. 

All his usual formalites of perfidy were observed with scrupulous technique. 

I can think of no better step to signalize the inauguration of the National Health service than that a person who so obviously needs psychiatric attention should be among the first of its patients. 

To improve is to change. To be perfect is to have changed a lot. 

The crafty, cold-blooded, blackhearted Italian. 

I have waited fifty years to see the Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench. 

Their worst misfortune was his birth; their next worst – his death. 

The Happy Warrior of Squandermania. 

Bossom? What an extraordinary name. Neither one thing nor the other! 

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… 

Without measureless and perpetual uncertainty the drama of human life would be destroyed. 

I have never seen a human being who more perfectly represented the modern conception of a robot. 

It would not have been possible for any man in public life to get through what I have gone through without the devoted assistance of what we in England call one’s better half. 

Everybody has a right to pronounce foreign names as he chooses. 

I must point out that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them. 

The redress of the grievances of the vanquished should precede the disarmament of the victors. 

It becomes still more difficult to reconcile Japanese action with prudence or even sanity. What kind of people do they think we are? 

It was a nation and race dwelling all around the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar. 

I live from mouth to hand. 

If we can stand up to Hitler, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. 

Jellicoe was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon. 

Nothing would induce me to vote for giving women the franchise. I am not going to be henpecked into a question of such importance. 

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

There are few virtues which the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided. 

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. 

I don’t see why not, young man. You look reasonably fit to me. 

We have sustained a defeat without a war. 

Well, the principle seems the same. The water still keeps falling over. 

When you took your seat I felt as if a woman had come into my bathroom and I had only the sponge to defend myself. 

Some people’s idea of [free speech] is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage. 

Success is often nothing more than moving from one failure to another with undiminished enthusiasm. 

If you don’t have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything. 

Victory is only wrested by running risks. 

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun. 

A single glass of champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration. The nerves are braced; the imagination is stirred, the wits become more nimble. 

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. 

Elections exist for the sake of the House of Commons and not the House of Commons for the sake of elections. 

He has to conceal what he would most wish to make public, and make public what he would most wish to conceal. 

I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British instead of the other way around, I might have gotten here on my own. 

In Great Britain, governments often change their policies without changing their men. In France, they usually change their men without changing their policy. 

They have done what they like. Their difficulty is to like what they have done. 

…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. 

There is the solution which I respectfully offer to you in this Address to which I have given the title “The Sinews of Peace.” 

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. 

At the beginning of this War megalomania was the only form of sanity. 

It is remarkable that Lord Esher should be so much astray…We must conclude that an uncontrollable fondness for fiction forbade him to forsake it for fact. Such constancy is a defect in an historian. 

I wanted us to go to the Tories when we were strong…not in misfortune to be made an honest woman of. 

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. 

My only consolation for the failure of the Dardanelles was that God wished things to be prolonged in order to sicken mankind of war, and that therefore He had interfered with a project that would have brought the war to a speedier conclusion. 

How many have gone? How many more to go? The Admiralty is fast asleep and lethargy & inertia are the order of the day. However everybody seems delighted – so there is nothing to be said. No plans, no enterprise, no struggle to aid the general cause. Just sit still on the spacious throne and snooze. 

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

This war proceeds along its terrible path by the slaughter of infantry…I say to myself every day. What is going on while we sit here, while we go away to dinner or home to bed? Nearly, 1000 – Englishmen, Britishers, and the other is America…Everything else is swept away. 

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

We sit in calm, airy, silent rooms opening upon sunlit and embowered lawns, not a sound except of summer and of husbandry disturbs the peace; but seven million men, any ten thousand of whom could have annihilated the ancient armies, are in ceaseless battle from the Alps to the Ocean. 

…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. 

More than 80 per cent of the British casualties of the Great War were English. More than 80 per cent of the taxation is paid by the English taxpayers. We are entitled to mention these facts, and to draw authority and courage from them. 

Let us reconcile ourselves to the mysterious rhythm of our destinies, such as they must be in this world of space and time. 

Nobody ever launched an attack without having misgivings beforehand, You ought to have misgivings before; but when the moment of action is come, the hour of misgivings is passed. It is often not possible to go backward from a course which has been adopted in war. A man must answer “Aye” or “No” to the great questions which are put, and by that decision he must be bound. 

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. 

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. That is the only way to deserve and to win the confidence of our great people in these days of trouble. 

It is very easy to say that your opponents have been guilty of a breach of faith, but it is a great mistake to splash the paint about so freely that your words cease to have any real meaning and cease to carry any sense of affront even to those to whom they are applied and cease to bear any connection with any genuine feeling of indignation on the part of those on whose behalf they are spoken. 

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

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

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

The difference between mere management and leadership is communication. 

What is our policy? … to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. 

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ 

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. 

If you cannot read all your books…fondle them-peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances. 

It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required. 

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril. 

My conclusion on Freewill and predestination- they are identical. 

Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage. 

There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man. 

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. 

The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous. 

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police … yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home – all the more powerful because forbidden – terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. 

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. 

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. 

We have not journeyed all this way because we are made of sugar candy. 

This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put. 

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public. 

There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained. 

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe. 

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. 

A lady came up to me one day and said ‘Sir! You are drunk’, to which I replied ‘I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly. 

I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial… I thought I knew a good deal about it all, I was sure I should not fail. 

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind. 

To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour. 

Doubts [can] be swept away only by deeds. 

You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. 

A modest little person, with much to be modest about. 

If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.” (Speech in Rome on 20 January, 1927, praising Mussolini) 

Do you know why the nose of the bull dog is sloped backwards? So it can keep on breathing without ever letting go. 

The most important thing about education is appetite. 

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’. 

You create your own universe as you go along. 

Don’t interrupt me while I’m interrupting. 

When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone. 

We build dwellings and thereafter they build us. 

The way to achieve happiness is to try for perfection that is impossible to achieve, and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it. 

Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. 

How fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave. 

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. 

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. 

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

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. 

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. 

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. 

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. 

Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential. 

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. 

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. 

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. 

Never, never, never give up. 

If you’re going through hell, keep going. 

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. 

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see. 

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. 

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me. 

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. 

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope. 

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. 

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. 

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. 

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. 

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. 

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

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon. 

A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality. 

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

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. 

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. 

Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft. 

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. 

Kites rise highest against the wind – not with it. 

The price of greatness is responsibility. 

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. 

It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary. 

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning. 

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught. 

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse. 

My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them. 

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. 

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. 

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. Never run away from anything. Never! 

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law. 

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else. 

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won. 

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us. 

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see. 

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

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another. 

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong. 

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. 

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you. 

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. 

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. 

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. 

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns. 

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game. 

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information. 

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion. 

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong. 

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. 

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure. 

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. 

A politician needs 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. 

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room. 

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. 

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

Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection. 

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm. 

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed. 

There is no such thing as a good tax. 

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read. 

I am easily satisfied with the very best. 

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. 

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else. 

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. 

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time. 

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. 

I never worry about action, but only inaction. 

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. 

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it. 

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget? 

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. 

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. 

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true. 

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

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out. 

A joke is a very serious thing. 

The first quality that is needed is audacity. 

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. 

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise. 

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. 

When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin. 

Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat. 

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

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent. 

If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future. 

The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst. 

History is written by the victors. 

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might. 

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result. 

Great and good are seldom the same man. 

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself. 

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. 

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. 

The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read. 

No part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections. 

I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place. 

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

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement. 

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him. 

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it. 

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. 

I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic. 

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult. 

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home. 

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod. 

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

It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging. 

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business. 

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words. 

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all. 

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite. 

We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years. 

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization. 

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire. 

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

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can. 

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day. 

I was only the servant of my country and had I, at any moment, failed to express her unflinching resolve to fight and conquer, I should at once have been rightly cast aside. 

‘No comment’ is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again. 

No crime is so great as daring to excel. 

It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar. 

India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator. 

Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about. 

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning. 

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English. 

If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons. 

These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived. 

For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank. 

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop. 

The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy’s aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure. 

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself. 

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have. 

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others. 

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on. 

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter. 

Eating words has never given me indigestion. 

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all. 

We do not covet anything from any nation except their respect. 

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive. 

One does not leave a convivial party before closing time. 

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times. 

I like a man who grins when he fights. 

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk. 

I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks. 

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders. 

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all. 

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty. 

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce. 

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham. 

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war. 

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times. 

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye. 

Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains. 

We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls. 

Success always demands a greater effort. 

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

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 no longer strong. 

it is the people who control the Government, not the Government the people. 

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? 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, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor. 

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

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. 

The maxim, “Nothing prevails but perfection,” may be spelled PARALYSIS. 

No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle. 

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge 

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 power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist. 

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. 

There is nothing government can give you that it hasn’t taken from you in the first place. 

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. 

I’d rather be right than consistent. 

We shall fight in parking lots, we shall fight in empty fields and on wide streets, we shall never surrender. 

One of the most important signs of the existence of a democracy is that when there is a knock at the door at 5 in the morning, one is completely certain that it is the milkman. 

Perfecting and selling your writing is a lifelong task. If you are a persistent writer, you can expect your abilities to improve with time. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. 

The United States stands at the pinnacle of world power. This is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with primacy in power is joined an awe-inspiring accountability for the future. 

It may be that … when the advance of destructive weapons enables everyone to kill everybody else nobody will want to kill anyone at all. [Referring to the hydrogen bomb.] 

When one is in office one has no idea how damnable things can feel to the ordinary rank and file of the public. 

We know enough to be sure that the scientific achievements of the next fifty years will be far greater, more rapid, and more surprising, than those we have already experienced. … Wireless telephones and television, following naturally upon the their present path of development, would enable their owner to connect up to any room similarly equipped and hear and take part in the conversation as well as if he put his head in through the window. 

The world, nature, human beings, do not move like machines. The edges are never clear-cut, but always frayed. Nature never draws a line without smudging it. 

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

Dead birds don’t fall out of their nests. 

Don’t be careless about yourselves-on the other hand not too careful. Live well but do not flaunt it. Laugh a little and teach your men to laugh-get good humor under fire-war is a game that’s played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can. 

Censure is often useful, praise is often deceitful. 

Christopher Columbus was the first socialist: he didn’t know where he was going, he didn’t know where he was? and he did it all at taxpayers expense. 

No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong. 

When told by a helpful aide that his flies were undone he replied ‘Young man, there is no harm in leaving the cage door open if the bird is dead! 

And a pamphlet called Pick me up There is no genuine hatred against Herr Hitler. 

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

I must place on record my regret that the human race ever learned to fly. 

You can measure a man’s character by the choices he makes under pressure. 

When you’re going through hell – just keep on going! 

No one can understand history without continually relating the long periods which are constantly mentioned to the experiences of our own short lives. 

The oldest habit in the world for resisting change is to complain that unless the remedy to the disease should be universally applied it should not be applied at all. But you must start somewhere. 

It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do. 

Watch your actions, they become your habits. 

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. 

Watch your character for your character is your destiny. 

At one side of the palette there is white, at the other black; and neither is ever used neat. 

I have always had a curious nature; I enjoy learning, but I dislike being taught. 

My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto. 

Just to paint is great fun. The colours are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out. Matching them, however crudely, with what you see is fascinating and absolutely absorbing. 

Every garden presents innumerable fascinating problems. 

Watch your habits, they determine your character. 

Leave to the masters of art trained by a lifetime of devotion the wonderful process of picture-building and picture creation. Go out into the sunlight and be happy with what you see. 

The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is a policy of first importance to a public man. 

Painting is a companion with whom one may walk a great part of life’s journey. 

The painter wanders and loiters contentedly from place to place, always on the lookout for some brilliant butterfly of a picture which can be caught and carried safely home. 

I do not presume to explain how to paint, but only how to get enjoyment. 

The vistas of possibility are only limited by the shortness of life. 

There is no better exercise than to study and devour a picture, and then, without looking at it again, to attempt the next day to reproduce it. 

A heightened sense of the observation of nature is one of the chief delights that have come to me through trying to paint. 

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. 

Painting is the same kind of problem as unfolding a long, sustained interlocked argument… It is a proposition commanded by a single unity of conception. 

We were not made by Nature to work, or even to play, from eight o’clock in the morning till midnight. We ought to break our days and our marches into two. 

A man can wear out a particular part of his mind by continually using and tiring it, just in the same way he can wear out the elbows of his coat. 

Watch your thoughts, they become your words. 

It may be that those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds. 

Men will forgive a man anything except bad prose. 

In Critical and baffling situations, it is always best to return to first principle and simple action 

it so often happens that, when men are convinced that they have to die, a desire to bear themselves well and to leave life’s stage with dignity conquers all other sensations. 

There is at least one thing worse than fighting with allies – And that is to fight without them 

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

Of all the branches of men in the forces there is none which shows more devotion and faces grimmer perils than the submariners. 

Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason. 

Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable? 

The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is someone outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; some one strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action. 

A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. 

Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance. 

When you have got a thing where you want, it is a good thing to leave it where it is. 

The object of Parliament is to substitute argument for fisticuffs. 

If you destroy a free market you create a black market. 

[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. 

The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed before another year has passed. 

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. 

Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy. 

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. 

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. 

The most dangerous moment of the War, and the one which caused me the greatest alarm, was when the Japanese Fleet was heading for Ceylon and the naval base there. The capture of Ceylon, the consequent control of the Indian Ocean, and the possibility at the same time of a German conquest of Egypt would have closed the ring and the future would have been black. 

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

I want no criticism of America at my table. The Americans criticize themselves more than enough. 

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. 

Like other systems in decay, the Roman Empire continued to function for several generations after its vitality was sapped. For nearly a hundred years our Island was one of the scenes of conflict between a dying civilisation and lusty, famishing barbarism. 

The essence and foundation of House of Commons debating is formal conversation. The set speech, the harangue addressed to constituents, or to the wider public out of doors, has never succeeded much in our small wisely-built chamber. To do any good you have got to get down to grips with the subject and in human touch with the audience. 

These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler’s invasion plans. He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city … Little does he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough fibre of the Londoners. 

I think it is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice. 

What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man … the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with political rights. 

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves, and to save all those who rely upon you. You have only to go right on, and at the end of the road, be it short or long, victory and honor will be found. 

We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium. 

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. 

872, Ivar, King of the Northmen of all Ireland and Britain , ended his life.” He had conquered Mercia and East Anglia. He had captured the major stronghold of the kingdom of Strathclyde, Dumbarton. Laden with loot and seemingly invincible, he settled in Dublin and died there peacefully two years later. The pious chroniclers report that he “slept in Christ.” Thus it may be that he had the best of both worlds. 

I have left the obvious, essential fact to this point, namely, that it is the Russian Armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the German army. In the air and on the oceans we could maintain our place, but there was no force in the world which could have been called into being, except after several more years, that would have been able to maul and break the German army unless it had been subjected to the terrible slaughter and manhandling that has fallen to it through the strength of the Russian Soviet Armies. 

We must build a kind of United States of Europe. 

I have worked very hard with Nehru. I told him he should be the light of Asia, to show all those mil-lions how they can shine out, instead of accept-ing the dark-ness of Com-mu-nism. 

The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. … Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility. 

First, Poland has been again overrun by two of the great powers which held her in bondage for 150 years but were unable to quench the spirit of the Polish nation. The heroic defense of Warsaw shows that the soul of Poland is indestructible, and that she will rise again like a rock which may for a spell be submerged by a tidal wave but which remains a rock. 

Side by side … the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue … mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them … gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians – upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must; as conquer we shall. 

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. 

Keep England White” is a good slogan. 

Historians are apt to judge war ministers less by the victories achieved under their direction than by the political results which flowed from them. Judged by that standard, I am not sure that I shall be held to have done very well. 

The lights of Saxon England were going out, and in the gathering darkness a gentle, grey-beard prophet foretold the end. When on his death-bed Edward spoke of a time of evil that was coming upon the land his inspired mutterings struck terror into the hearers. 

One might as well legalise sodomy as recognise the Bolsheviks. 

Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence, which is a noble thing. 

I do think unpunctuality is a vile habit, and all my life I have tried to break myself of it. 

It excites world wonder in the Parliamentary countries that we should build a Chamber, starting afresh, which can only seat two-thirds of its Members. It is difficult to explain this to those who do not know our ways. They cannot easily be made to understand why we consider that the intensity, passion, intimacy, informality and spontaneity of our Debates constitute the personality of the House of Commons and endow it at once with its focus and its strength. 

Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! … How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care … We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end … Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force. 

We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes. 

And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. 

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber. 

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival. 

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others. 

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right. 

The POSITIVE THINKER sees the INVISIBLE, feels the INTANGIBLE, and achieves the IMPOSSIBLE.