Winston Churchill

We must build a kind of United States of Europe.

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.

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

In time of war when truth is so precious it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth but most times he will pick himself up and carry on.

You must look at the facts because they look at you

We have sustained a defeat without a war.

Success is going from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm.

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.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

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.

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

The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat but they are no less difficult.

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.

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

Although prepared for martyrdom I preferred that it be postponed.

Each beat guides me in Your direction.

India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

We are masters of the unsaid words but slaves of those we let slip out

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

There's something about the outside of a horse that's good for the inside of a man

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.

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

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

A sheep in sheep's clothing

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.

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

Civilization 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

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.

[And a pamphlet called] Pick me up ... There is no genuine hatred against Herr Hitler.

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

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

Study history study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.

There was unanimous automatic unquestioned agreement around our table.

I never worry about action but only about inaction

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.

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

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right than to be responsible and wrong.

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

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.

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.

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'.

Remember gentlemen it's not just France we are fighting for its Champagne!

War is a catalouge of blunders.

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

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

'Mr. Churchill if you were my husband I'd poison your tea!' - And if you were my wife I would drink it!

Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I have never seen a human being who more perfectly represented the modern conception of a robot.

However beautiful the strategy you should occasionally look at the results.

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.

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

The rule which forbids ending a sentence with a preposition is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put.

A medal glitters but it also casts a shadow

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.

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

It's quite simple (public speaking) Say what you have to say, and when you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending, sit down.

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

Great and good are seldom the same man.

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

At every crisis the Kaiser crumpled. In defeat he fled, in revolution he abdicated, in exile he remarried.

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

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

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

If you must kill a man it costs you nothing to be polite about it.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Why 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

The first quality that is needed is audacity.

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 improve is to change. To be perfect is to have changed alot.

To jaw-jaw- is always better than to war-war

Without tradition art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation it is a corpse.

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.

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.

Never never never never give up.

We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.

It becomes still more difficult to reconcile Japanese action with prudence or even sanity. What kind of people do they think we are?

Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Nothing would induce me to vote for giving women the franchise. I am not going to be henpecked into a question of such importance.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

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.

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

The shadow of victory is disillusion

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning

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

Men occasionally stumble over the truth but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Sure I am of this that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves.

Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

Don

Tell them from me they are unloading history.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

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.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose... only then will you learn the game.

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

You may try to destroy all the wealth and find that all you have done is increase poverty.

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.

Success is never final.

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.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won

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 to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

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.

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

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.'

It is always wise to look ahead but difficult to look further than you can see.

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

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism

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

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

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

Christopher Columbus was the first socialist: he didn

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

The Balkans produce more history than they can consume

Experts should be on tap but never on top.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it

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

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

Well the principle seems the same. The water still keeps falling over.

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

The truth is incontrovertible malice may attack it ignorance may deride it but in the end, there it is.

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

It is important when you haven't got any ammunition to have a butt on your rifle.

In war resolution, in defeat defiance, in victory magnanimity

[Lady Nancy Astor:] Winston if you were my husband I'd put poison in your coffee. ... Nancy if you were my wife I'd drink it.

We must beware of needless innovation especially when guided by logic.

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.