Winston S. Churchill Quotes & Sayings

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it. — Winston S. Churchill

3760we will fight them on the beaches — Winston S. Churchill

My conclusion on Freewill and predestination- they are identical. — Winston S. Churchill

Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get in the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge, and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows where it hurts is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialized character. — Winston S. Churchill

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. — Winston S. Churchill

A remarkable and definite victory.
The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers
and warmed and cheered all our hearts. — Winston S. Churchill

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

A modest little person, with much to be modest about. — Winston S. Churchill

Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. — Winston S. Churchill

I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire. — Winston S. Churchill

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns. — Winston S. Churchill

When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone. — Winston S. Churchill

I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

Logic, like science, must be the servant and not the master of man. — Winston S. Churchill

Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential. — Winston S. Churchill

Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the
gospel of envy.
[PERTH, 28 MAY 1948] — Winston S. Churchill

Projects undreamed of by past generations will absorb our immediate descendants, comforts, activities, amenities, pleasures will crowd upon them, but their hearts will ache and their lives will be barren, if they have not a vision above material things. — Winston S. Churchill

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
[On British Labour politician Stafford Cripps.] — Winston S. Churchill

If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future. — Winston S. Churchill

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

Now that we have run out of money we have to think. — Winston S. Churchill

The unnatural principle of human sacrifice was carried by the British Druids to a ruthless pitch. The mysterious priesthoods of the forests bound themselves and their votaries together by the most deadly sacrament that men can take. Here, perhaps, upon these wooden altars of a sullen island, there lay one of the secrets, awful, inflaming, unifying, of the tribes of Gaul. And whence did this sombre custom come? — Winston S. Churchill

Resposibility is the price of greatness. — Winston S. Churchill

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. — Winston S. Churchill

There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true. — Winston S. Churchill

No Socialist system can be established without a political police. Many of those who are advocating Socialism or voting Socialist today will be horrified at this idea. That is because they are short-sighted, that is because they do not see where their theories are leading them. 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 humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

I could not live without Champagne. In victory I deserve it. In defeat I need it. — Winston S. Churchill

When we face with a steady eye the difficulties which lie before us, we may derive new confidence from remembering those we have already overcome. — Winston S. Churchill

This is not the end its only the begninning — Winston S. Churchill

The POSITIVE THINKER sees the INVISIBLE, feels the INTANGIBLE, and achieves the IMPOSSIBLE. — Winston S. Churchill

In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. "Mr. President, what's this about Japan?" "It's quite true," he replied. "They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

This is a strange Christmas Eve,"Churchill told the the crowd of several hundred gathered at the mansion's garden."Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and with the most terrible weapons which science can devise the nations advance upon each other. — Winston S. Churchill

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

During this period I usually managed to take two afternoons a week in the areas under attack in Kent or Sussex in order to see for myself what was happening. — Winston S. Churchill

On November 5 he landed at Torbay, on the coast of Devon. Reminded that it was the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, he remarked to Burnet, What do you think of Predestination now? — Winston S. Churchill

Success is going from one failure to the next without losing enthusiasm — Winston S. Churchill

The S.A.L.H. were mostly South Africans, with a high proportion of hardbitten adventurers from all quarters of the world, including a Confederate trooper from the American Civil War. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

When York's son, hitherto Earl of March, learned that his father's cause had devolved upon him he did not shrink. He fell upon the Earl of Wiltshire and the Welsh Lancastrians, and on February 2, 1461, at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross, near Hereford, he beat and broke — Winston S. Churchill

He looks like a female llama who has just been surprised in her bath. — Winston S. Churchill

I am a man of simple tastes easily satisfied with the best — Winston S. Churchill

Although our American friends, some of whose generals visited us, took a more alarmist view of our position, and the world at large regarded the invasion of Britain as probable, we ourselves felt free to send overseas all the troops our available shipping could carry and to wage offensive war in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Here was the hinge on which our ultimate victory turned, and it was in 1941 that the first significant events began. In war armies must fight. Africa was the only continent in which we could meet our foes on land. The defence of Egypt and of Malta were duties compulsive upon us, and the destruction of the Italian Empire the first prize we could gain. The British resistance in the Middle East to the triumphant Axis Powers and our attempt to rally the Balkans and Turkey against them are the theme and thread of our story now. — Winston S. Churchill

In every age there comes a time when a leader must come forward to meet the needs of the hour. Therefore, there is no potential leader who does not have the opportunity to make a positive difference in society. — Winston S. Churchill

It is the people who control the Government, not the Government the
people. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

In the long years to come, not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we've done, and they will say 'do not despair, do not yield ... march straightforward. — Winston S. Churchill

We, in short, propose to tax luxuries, monopolies, and superfluities, but we scrupulously avoid taxing the necessaries of life. — Winston S. Churchill

They have destroyed your weapons," he had told the generals, in effect. "But these weapons would in any case have become obsolete before the next war. That war will be fought with brand-new ones, and the army which is least hampered with obsolete material will have a great advantage. — Winston S. Churchill

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

The outside of a horse is good for the inside of man. — Winston S. Churchill

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes. — Winston S. Churchill

Socialism is inseparably interwoven with Totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State. 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. — Winston S. Churchill

There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book appears one should read an old one. — Winston S. Churchill

The wars of people will be more terrible than those of kings. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. The — Winston S. Churchill

Churchill kept perspective on the crowds that gathered to hear him speak by conceding they would be twice as big if gathered to see him hanged. — Winston S. Churchill

There is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

I don't like mixing up moralities with mathematics. — Winston S. Churchill

But Governments and peoples do not always take rational decisions. Sometimes they take mad decisions, or one set of people get control who compel all others to obey and aid them in folly. — Winston S. Churchill

Action This Day. — Winston S. Churchill

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 — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine, which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing, cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces. It must be in continual motion, grinding up human lives and trampling down the homes and the rights of hundreds of millions of men. Moreover it must be fed, not only with flesh but with oil. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce. — Winston S. Churchill

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. — Winston S. Churchill

Good and great are seldom in the same man. — Winston S. Churchill

Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant. — Winston S. Churchill

A society is measured by the treatment of its prisoners — Winston S. Churchill

The Turkish infantry were as fine as they had ever been, and their field artillery was presentable. But they had none of the modern weapons which from May, 1940, were proved to be decisive. Aviation was lamentably weak and primitive. They had no tanks or armoured cars, and neither the workshops to make and maintain them nor the trained men and staffs to handle them. They had hardly any anti-aircraft or anti-tank artillery. Their signal service was rudimentary. Radar was unknown to them. Nor did their warlike qualities include any aptitude for all these modern developments. — Winston S. Churchill

Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes. — Winston S. Churchill

I have adhered to my rule of never criticising any measure of war or policy after the event unless I had before expressed publicly or formally my opinion or warning about it. — Winston S. Churchill

Anyone who was not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, while anyone who was still a liberal at 40 had no head. — Winston S. Churchill

We must not let our standards be determined by the gentlemen of the oposition — Winston S. Churchill

One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision. Life is a whole, and luck is a whole, and no part of them can be separated from the rest. — Winston S. Churchill

We have not journeyed all this way because we are made of sugar candy. — Winston S. Churchill

Ten or twelve men, especially between brothers and between fathers and sons; but the offspring of these unions are counted as the children of the man with whom a particular woman cohabited first. — Winston S. Churchill

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? — Winston S. Churchill

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

Churchill used words for different purposes: to argue for moral and political causes, to advocate courses of action in the social, national and international spheres, and to tell the story of his own life and that of Britain and its place in the world. — Winston S. Churchill

The prejudice of the Americans against monarchy, which Mr. Lloyd George made no attempt to counteract, had made it clear to the beaten Empire that it would have better treatment from the Allies as a republic than as a monarchy. Wise policy would have crowned and fortified the Weimar Republic with a constitutional sovereign in the person of an infant grandson of the Kaiser, under a Council of Regency. — Winston S. Churchill

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 — Winston S. Churchill

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite. — Winston S. Churchill

Of course I'm an egoist. Where do you get if you aren't? — Winston S. Churchill

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else. — Winston S. Churchill

Never ever give up — Winston S. Churchill

I have heard of wars for the defence of the Protestant religion: our enemies in this instance are equally enemies of all religion - of Lutheranism, of Calvinism; and desirous to propagate everywhere, by the force of their arms, that system of infidelity which they avow in their principles. I — Winston S. Churchill