Winston S. Churchill
72 quotes
Biography
"We are all worms, But I do believe that I am a glow worm."
"Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all."
"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 meant to be wooed and won by youth."
"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."
"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."
"People stumble over the truth from time to time,but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened."
"It's no use saying, "We are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary."
"Extolling the virtues of conservation of energy, Churchill advised, "Never stand when you can sit, and never sit when you can lie down."
"Books, in all their variety, offer the human intellect the means whereby civilization may be carried triumphantly forward."
"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."
"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"
"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 to live as slaves."
"The wars of people will be more terrible than those of kings."
"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."
"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."
"We seek no treasure, we seek no territorial gains, we seek only the right of man to be free; we seek his rights to worship his god, to lead his life in his own way, secure from persecution. As the humble labourer returned from his work when the day is don, and sees the smoke curling upwards from his cottage home in the serene evening sky, we wish him to know that no rat-a-tat of the secret police upon his door will disturb his leisure or interrupt his rest."
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."
"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."
"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)"
"If he trips he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes they must be covered. If he sleeps he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good he must be pole-axed"
"To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often."
"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."
"When eagles are silent, parrots begin to chatter."
"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."
"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."