Winston Churchill Quotes

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

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

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Never, never, never give up.

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.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

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

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

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

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.

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

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

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!

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

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

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

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

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

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.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

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.

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

My education was interrupted only by my schooling.

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.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

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.

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

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.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

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

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

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

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

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

For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else

History is written by the victors.

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

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

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.

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.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

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

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

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

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 always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

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

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

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

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

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

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.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

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

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

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

It is better to be frightened now than killed hereafter

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

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

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

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

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

Censure is often useful, praise is often deceitful.

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.

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.

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

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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

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.

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.

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 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.

Success is never final.

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.

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.

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

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

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

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

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

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

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.

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

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

When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone.

It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge

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

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

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.

A joke is a very serious thing.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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'.

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

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

The maxim, "Nothing prevails but perfection," may be spelled PARALYSIS.

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

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

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

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.

Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

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.'

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

Without courage all other virtues lose their meaning.

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.

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

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.

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

Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.

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.

Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The English never draw a line without blurring it.

The maxim of the British people is; Business as Usual!

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.

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

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.

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

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 empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

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

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.