Quotes & Sayings About War Winston Churchill

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

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

I think that perhaps the classic propagandists of the - in the Second World War was Winston Churchill. He was extremely skilled and adept at it. — Alexander Haig

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. — Winston Churchill

The Government simply cannot make up their mind or they cannot get the prime minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful for impotency. And so we go on preparing more months more years precious perhaps vital for the greatness of Britain for the locusts to eat. - Speaking in the Address in Reply debate, after giving some specific instances of Germany's war preparedness — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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

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. — Winston Churchill

Those good at war aren't good at peace, and those good at peace aren't good at war. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

War will find us whether we are ready or not. — Winston S. Churchill

Wars are not won by evacuations. — Winston Churchill

The War Department in Washington briefly weighed more ambitious schemes to relieve the Americans on a large scale before it was too late. But by Christmas of 1941, Washington had already come to regard Bataan as a lost cause. President Roosevelt had decided to concentrate American resources primarily in the European theater rather than attempt to fight an all-out war on two distant fronts. At odds with the emerging master strategy for winning the war, the remote outpost of Bataan lay doomed. By late December, President Roosevelt and War Secretary Henry Stimson had confided to Winston Churchill that they had regrettably written off the Philippines. In a particularly chilly phrase that was later to become famous, Stimson had remarked, 'There are times when men have to die. — Hampton Sides

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

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. — Winston Churchill

[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. — Winston Churchill

In war what you don't dislike is not usually what the enemy does. — Winston S. Churchill

In War: Resolution,
In Defeat: Defiance,
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

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

As a student, I had stayed with Winston Churchill; later, I had lunched with Harold Macmillan - in fact, had met most of the post-war prime ministers of Great Britain from Douglas-Home to Tony Blair. — Nigel Hamilton

The actor Richard Burton once wrote an article for the New York Times about his experience playing the role of Winston Churchill in a television drama:
"In the course of preparing myself ... I realized afresh that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. I hate them virulently. They have stalked down the corridors of endless power all through history ... What man of sanity would say on hearing of the atrocities committed by the Japanese against British and Anzac prisoners of war, 'We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men, women, and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of the earth? Such simple
minded cravings for revenge leave me with a horrified but reluctant awe for such single
minded and merciless ferocity."
— Richard Francis Burton

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. — Winston S. Churchill

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him. — Winston S. Churchill

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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

The siesta provides a delightful detour from the working day and it also has a practical value as far as productivity is concerned. Winston Churchill had a good long siesta every day during the Second World War, and he said it was the thing that enabled him to cope with the pressure. — Tom Hodgkinson

God for a month of power & a good shorthand writer. — Winston Churchill

At the beginning of this War megalomania was the only form of sanity. — Winston Churchill

Air power may either end war or end civilization. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

I think that Sir Winston Churchill, in the period that the Germans occupied the Channel Ports, when the whole war hung in issue, fulfilled a role, which is as great as any role in our history. — Malcolm Muggeridge

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".] — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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

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. — Winston Churchill

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

We must learn from misfortune the means of future strength. — Winston Churchill

I do not suppose that at any moment of history has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. Tonight the sun goes down on more suffering than ever before in the world. — Winston S. Churchill

War is horrible, but slavery is worse. — Winston Churchill

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 — Winston S. Churchill

Support for a first strike extended far beyond the upper ranks of the U.S. military. Bertrand Russell - the British philosopher and pacifist, imprisoned for his opposition to the First World War - urged the western democracies to attack the Soviet Union before it got an atomic bomb. Russell acknowledged that a nuclear strike on the Soviets would be horrible, but "anything is better than submission." Winston Churchill agreed, proposing that the Soviets be given an ultimatum: withdraw your troops from Germany, or see your cities destroyed. Even Hamilton Holt, lover of peace, crusader for world government, lifelong advocate of settling disputes through mediation and diplomacy and mutual understanding, no longer believed that sort of approach would work. Nuclear weapons had changed everything, and the Soviet Union couldn't be trusted. Any nation that rejected U.N. control of atomic energy, Holt said, "should be wiped off the face of the earth with atomic bombs. — Eric Schlosser

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

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? — Winston 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

Winston Churchill, who abhorred laziness in other people, himself took a nap every afternoon. He defended his afternoon doze in practical terms as an absolute necessity: 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. Don't think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That's a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one - well, at least one and a half, I'm sure. When the war started, I had to sleep during the day because that was the only way I could cope with my responsibilities. — Tom Hodgkinson

When he smelled battle afar off, Winston Churchill resembled the war horse in Job who turned not back from the sword, but 'paweth in the valley and saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha.' He was the only British minister to have a perfectly clear conviction of what Britain should do and to act upon it without hesitation. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Air superiority is the ultimate expression of military power. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

Well, in war, you can only be killed once. But in politics, many times. — Winston S. Churchill

Winston Churchill said 'In war time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies'. Any book called The Truth should therefore have one. — Terry Pratchett

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

There is the solution which I respectfully offer to you in this Address to which I have given the title "The Sinews of Peace." — Winston Churchill

When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin. — Winston Churchill

To be sure, Kennedy did not discount the importance of words in rallying the nation to meet its foreign and domestic challenges. Winston Churchill's powerful exhortations during World War II set a standard he had long admired. Kennedy was hardly unmindful of how important a great inaugural address could be. — Robert Dallek

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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

Nations that went down fighting rose again, but those who surrendered tamely were finished. — Winston S. Churchill

If we don't end war, war will end us. — Winston S. Churchill

You know, in war, you don't have to be nice. You only have to be right. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

Without ships, we cannot live. — Winston Churchill

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders. — Winston Churchill

Old men make war, young men fight and die — Winston Churchill

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

The great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation. Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a world of shared prosperity. — Jeffrey Sachs

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever. — Winston S. Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

In war, truth is often the first casualty. — Winston Churchill

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

Winston Churchill wrote afterwards: 'No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening. The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed. Nor was there any other period in the War when the general battle was waged on so great a scale, when the slaughter was so swift or the stakes so high. Moreover, in the beginning, our faculties of wonder, horror, or excitement had not been cauterized and deadened by the furnace fires of years. — Max Hastings

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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

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

Have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 4 June 1940 — Andrew Roberts

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston Churchill

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. — Winston S. Churchill