Winston Churchill Quotes

“If you make 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”

“Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.”

“Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature.”

“We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years.”

“The enemy is still proud and powerful. He is hard to get at. He still possesses enormous armies, vast resources, and invaluable strategic territories...No one can tell what new complications and perils might arise in four or five more years of war. And it is in the dragging-out of the war at enormous expense, until the democracies are tired or bored or split that the main hopes of Germany and Japan must reside.”

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

“Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy.”

“The true guide of life is to do what is right.”

“We need to be strong in order to avoid war; and to win. A politician looks forward only to the next election. A statesman looks forward to the next generation. Any person who is over 30 and is not a conservative, has no brains.”

“Success always demands a greater effort.”

“The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”

“One of the most important signs of the existence of a democracy is that when there is a knock at the door at 5 in the morning, one is completely certain that it is the milkman.”

“All babies look like me.But then, I look like all babies.”

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go. Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.”

“And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

“The women's suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers, and husbands.”

“The man who can master his time can master nearly anything.”

“Never does a man portray his character more vividly than when proclaiming the character of another.”

“Criticism is easy; achievement is difficult.”

“[There are dangers in] the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts.”

“When you are going through hell, don't stop.”

“The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-Boat peril...It did not take the form of flaring battles and glittering achievements, it manifested itself through statistics, diagrams, and curves unknown to the nation, incomprehensible to the public.”

“Expert knowledge is limited knowledge”

“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.”

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

“Life is a test and this world a place of trial. Always the problems - or it may be the same problem - will be presented to every generation in different forms.”

“We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.”

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

“A man who gets the reputation of rising at dawn can sleep to noon.”

“A joke is a very serious thing.”

“In all the twelve years I was at school no one ever succeeded in making me write a Latin verse or learn any Greek except the alphabet.”

“Lots of folks are forced to skimp to support a government that won't.”

“The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought.”

“If, however, there is to be a war of nerves let us make sure our nerves are strong and are fortified by the deepest convictions of our hearts.”

“The POSITIVE THINKER sees the INVISIBLE, feels the INTANGIBLE, and achieves the IMPOSSIBLE.”

“Like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it ... And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue - out of charity and out of chivalry ... - and said, "Are these toys any good to you? They amuse some people."”

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

“There was a man who sold a hyena skin while the beast still lived and who was killed in hunting it.”

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

“We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.”

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

“Even fools are right sometimes.”

“To improve is to change.”

“Elections exist for the sake of the House of Commons and not the House of Commons for the sake of elections.”

“So long as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm.”

“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.”

“The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending.”

“What a fool I have been!”

“I drink and smoke and I am two hundred percent fit.”

“The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.”