Winston Churchill Quotes

There is no sphere of human thought in which it is easier to show superficial cleverness and the appearance of superior wisdom than in discussing questions of currency and exchange

I don't like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand right back and if possible get a pillar between me and the train. I don't like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second's action would end everything. A few drops of desperation.

We get to make a living; we give to make a life.

Everyone threw the blame on me ... they nearly always do. I suppose ... they think I shall be able to bear it best.

Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.

All wisdom is not new wisdom.

It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides.

It is no use dealing with illusions and make-believes. We must look at the facts. The world ... is too dangerous for anyone to be able to afford to nurse illusions. We must look at realities.

It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events.

Censure is often useful, praise is often deceitful.

That long (Canadian) frontier from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, guarded only by neighbourly respect and honourable obligations, as an example to every country and a pattern for the future of the world.

If I was your wife Sir, I'd poison you! Madam, if you were my wife, I'd let you!

Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it all others depend.

Without execution, thinking is mere idleness.

Sunshine is my quest.

The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.

For with primacy in power is also joined an awe inspiring accountability to the future.

The Chinese said of themselves several thousand years ago: China is a sea that salts all the waters that flow into it. Theres another Chinese saying about their country which is much more modernit dates only from the fourth century. This is the saying: The tail of China is large and will not be wagged. I like that one. The British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails. It is due to the working of these important forces that I have the honour to be addressing you at this moment.

Keep calm and carry on.

Any idiot can see something wrong. But can you see what is right?

Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valor our only shield. We must be united, we must be undaunted, we must be inflexible.

The facilities for advanced education must be evened out and multiplied. No one who can take advantage of a higher education should be denied this chance. You cannot conduct a modern community except with an adequate supply of persons upon whose education, whether humane, technical, or scientific, much time and money have been spent.

Praise the humanities, my boy. That'll make them think you're broadminded!

What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?

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

I built with my own hands ... a large swimming-pool which was filtered to limpidity and could be heated to supplement our fickle sunshine.

This fulfils my ambition. I still have my father's robe as Chancellor. I shall be proud to serve you in this splendid office.

There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away.

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

Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely.

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.

Have no fear of the future. Let us go forward into its mysteries, tear away the veils which hide it from our eyes, and move onwards with confidence and courage.

A lady came up to me one day and said 'Sir! You are drunk', to which I replied 'I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.

The element of the unexpected and the unforeseeable is what gives some of its relish to life and saves us from falling into the mechanical thralldom of the logicians.

To meet Roosevelt with all his buoyant sparkle, his iridescence, was like opening a bottle of champagne.

In war, the truth must be guarded by a body guard of lies.

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

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.

But who in war will not have his laugh amid the skulls?

We sit in calm, airy, silent rooms opening upon sunlit and embowered lawns, not a sound except of summer and of husbandry disturbs the peace; but seven million men, any ten thousand of whom could have annihilated the ancient armies, are in ceaseless battle from the Alps to the Ocean.

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.

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

Every man should ask himself each day whether he is not too readily accepting negative solutions.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

Nobody ever launched an attack without having misgivings beforehand, You ought to have misgivings before; but when the moment of action is come, the hour of misgivings is passed. It is often not possible to go backward from a course which has been adopted in war. A man must answer "Aye" or "No" to the great questions which are put, and by that decision he must be bound.

A study of Disease-of Pestilences methodically prepared and deliberately launched upon man and beast-is certainly being pursue in the laboratories of more than one great country. Blight to destroy crops, Anthrax to slay horses and cattle, Plague to poison not armies but whole districts - such are the lines along which military science is remorselessly advancing.

He looks like a female llama who has been surprised in the bath.

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.