Winston Churchill Quotes

You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.

If you simply take up the attitude of defending a mistake, there will no hope of improvement.

History's villains are more easily recognized in retrospect. In an article published in 1935 and reprinted in 1937, Winston Churchill expressed a curious ambivalence towards the German chancellor prior to the outbreak of war: We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilization will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the great Germanic nation. . . .

There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called a blessed act of oblivion. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.

It is a curious fact about British Islanders, who hate drill and have not been invaded for nearly a thousand years, that as danger comes nearer and grows they become progressively less nervous; when it is imminent the are fierce, when it is mortal they are fearless.

We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls.

They [the Labour Party] are not fit to manage a whelk stall.

Some people did not like this ceremonious style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.

I'd prefer to be right than consistent.

And what a plan! This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever occurred.

A sheep in sheep's clothing.

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.

If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

We were not made by Nature to work, or even to play, from eight o'clock in the morning till midnight. We ought to break our days and our marches into two.

Only changes in mindsets can extend the frontiers of the possible.

Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees...to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation.

If you want me to speak for two minutes, it will take me three weeks of preparation. If you want me to speak for thirty minutes, it will take me a week to prepare. If you want me to speak for an hour, I am ready now.

I must place on record my regret that the human race ever learned to fly.

The arts are essen­tial to any com­plete national life. The State owes it to itself to sus­tain and encour­age them. [...] Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the rev­er­ence and delight which are their due.

I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder’. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye and I have waited fifty years, to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.

The substitution of the internal combustion engine for the horse marked a very gloomy milestone in the progress of mankind.

There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book appears one should read an old one. As as author I would not recommend too strict an adherence to this saying.

Life can either be accepted or changed. If it is not accepted, it must be changed. If it cannot be changed, then it must be accepted.

I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations. I am sorry, however, that he has not been mellowed by the great success that has attended him. The whole world would rejoice to see the Hitler of peace and tolerance, and nothing would adorn his name in world history so much as acts of magnanimity and of mercy and of pity to the forlorn and friendless, to the weak and poor.... Let this great man search his own heart and conscience before he accuses anyone of being a warmonger.

Manifest destiny was on the march, and it was unfortunate that Mexico stood in the path.

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

I cannot but think we have much to be thankful for, and more still to hope for in the future.

During their lifetimes, every man and woman will stumble across a great opportunity. Sadly, most of them will simply pick themselves up, dust themselves down and carry on as if nothing ever happened.

Success is never found. Failure is never fatal. Courage is the only thing.

There is a place for everyone, man and woman, old and young, hale and halt; service in a thousand forms is open. There is no room now for the dilettante, the weakling, for the shirker, or the sluggard. From the highest to the humblest tasks, all are of equal honor; all have their part to play.

I have always noticed that whenever a radical takes to Imperialism, he catches it in a very acute form.

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.

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

Hope has returned to the hearts of scores of millions of men and women, and with that hope there burns the flame of anger against the brutal, corrupt invader ... In a dozen famous ancient States now prostrate under the Nazi yoke, the masses of the people ... await the hour of liberation ... That hour will strike, and its solemn peal will proclaim that the night is past and that the dawn has come.

A modest little person, with much to be modest about.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party

An aphorism is not an aphorism unless you know what it means.

I'm so bored with it all.

I am in favor of deliberately spreading methodically prepared bacteria among people and animals -- mildew ... to destroy the harvests, anthrax to destroy horses and livestock, and the plague, in order to kill not only entire armies, but also the inhabitants of large regions.

I play for high stakes and given an audience - there is no act too daring or too noble.

You ask what the aim is? I tell you it is victory - total victory.

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 the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.

One is quite astonished to find how many things there are in the landscape, and in every object in it, one never noticed before. And this is a tremendous new pleasure and interest which invests every walk or drive with an added object. So many colours on the hillside, each different in shadow and in sunlight; such brilliant reflections in the pool, each a key lower than what they repeat; such lovely lights gilding or silvering surface or outline, all tinted exquisitely with pale colour, rose, orange, green or violet.

It is bad for a nation when it is without faith.

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle them, and, as it were, fondle them. Let them fall open where they will. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas.

I feel devoutly thankful to have been born fond of writing.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... 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.'