Winston Churchill Quotes

What a fool I have been!

It is sheer laziness not compressing thought into a reasonable space.

There are plenty of good ideas, if only they can be backed with the power of action.

Before the war it had seemed incredible that such terrors and slaughters, even if they began, could last more than a few months. After the first two years it was difficult to believe that they would ever end.

Sometimes our best is simply not enough.... We have to do what is required.

The American Constitution declares 'All men are born equal.' The British Socialist Party add: 'All men must be kept equal'.

We build dwellings and thereafter they build us.

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

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Success and happiness spring from facing failure after failure with enthusiasm.

"I have not made any arrogant, confident, boasting predictions at all. On the contrary, I have stuck hard to my "blood, toil, tears and sweat," to which I have added muddle and mismanagement, and that, to some extend I must admit, is what you have got out of it."

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Those who plan do better than those who do not plan, even should they rarely stick to their plan.

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

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

Better to dare mighty things and fail than to live in a grey twilight where there is neither victory nor defeat.

Time is one thing that can never be retrieved. One may lose and regain friends. One may lose and regain money. Opportunity, once spurned, may come again. But the hours that are lost in idleness can never be brought back to be used in gainful pursuits

Victory was to be bought so dear as to be almost indistinguishable from defeat.

They have done what they like. Their difficulty is to like what they have done.

There is not much collective security in a flock of sheep on the way to the butcher.

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

One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided wherever possible.

Nothing is won without enthusiasm.

Life is a test and this world a place of trial.

I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my fathers house to believe in democracy. Trust the peoplethat was his message.

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty. [Referring to the theory that over-production caused the Depression]

Judged by every standard which history has applied to Governments, the Soviet Government of Russia is one of the worst tyrannies that has ever existed in the world. It accords no political rights. It rules by terror. It punishes political opinions. It suppresses free speech. It tolerates no newspapers but its own. It persecutes Christianity with a zeal and a cunning never equalled since the times of the Roman Emperors. It is engaged at this moment in trampling down the peoples of Georgia and executing their leaders by hundreds.

An American diplomat is sometimes like a bull who carries his own china shop around with him.

We have not journeyed all this way because we are made of sugar candy.

I was on the whole considerably discouraged by my school days... It is not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the very beginning of the race.

Victory will never be found by taking the path of least resistance.

History is written by the victors.

When a new book appears one should read an old one.

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.

When you're going through hell - just keep on going!

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

Danger gathers upon our path. We cannot afford - we have no right - to look back. We must look forward

There but for the grace of God, goes God.

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. Here I might leave my bones.

Vast and fearsome as the human scene has become, personal contact of the right people, in the right places, at the right time, may yet have a potent and valuable part to play in the cause of peace which is in our hearts.

I get my exercise being a pallbearer for those of my friends who believed in regular running and calisthenics.

The Golcondas were considered incomparably the best team in Southern India ... [But] we defeated [them] by 9 goals to 3. On succeeding days we made short work of all other opponents, and established the record, never since broken, of winning a first-class tournament within fifty days of landing in India.

In battles two things are usually required of the Commander-in-Chief: to make a good plan for his army and, secondly, to keep a strong reserve.

Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.

Rugby is a hooligans game played by gentlemen.

I would tell myself that I was about to address the largest mass assembly of idiots ever gathered in the history of mankind.

How I hated this school, and what a life of anxiety I lived there for more than two years.

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.