Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
Winston Churchill was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. (Winston S. Churchill Quotes)
“A battle is a veil through which it is not wise to peer.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“A great event is taking place here, a great event in the world’s destiny. It is taking place without injury or injustice to anyone; it is transforming waste places into fertile; it is planting trees and developing agriculture in desert lands; it is making for an increase in wealth and of cultivation; it is making two blades of grass from where one grew before.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“A large proportion of the population of religious countries pass their lives at leisure, supported by the patient labour of the devout.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“A man may be poor; he may have nothing at all except his labour to sell; he may be a manual worker for a weekly wage, but in a free commonwealth he must enjoy as good a right as any lord, or prelate, or capitalist in the country to the integrity of his own political convictions.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill
“A man will perhaps tolerate an offensive word applied to himself, but will be infuriated if his nation, his rank, or his profession is insulted.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“A modern dictator with the resources of science at his disposal can easily lead the public on from day to day, destroying all persistency of thought and aim, so that memory is blurred by the multiplicity of daily news and judgment baffled by its perversion”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“A nation that forgets its past has no future.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“A nation without a conscience is a nation without a soul. A nation without a soul is a nation that cannot live.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“A wide humanitarian sympathy in a nation easily degenerates into hysteria. A military spirit tends towards brutality. Liberty leads to licence, restraint to tyranny. The pride of race is distended to blustering arrogance. The fear of God produces bigotry and superstition. There appears no exception to the mournful rule, and the best efforts of men, however glorious their early results, have dismal endings, like plants which shoot and bud and put forth beautiful flowers, and then grow rank and coarse and are withered by the winter.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“A wit wrote ten years ago: “The leaders of thought have reached the horizons of human reason, but all the wires are down, and they can only communicate with us by unintelligible signals.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“All are invited to the headquarters. Babel, tempered by skilful lobbying, is all that has resulted up to the present. But we must persevere.”
Winston S. Churchill
Triumph and Tragedy
“All comes out even at the end of the day, and all will come out yet more even when all the days are ended.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“All this shows how much luck there is in human affairs, and how little we should worry about anything except doing our best.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“All was there—the program of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit of the world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“An iron curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind.”
Winston S. Churchill
Triumph and Tragedy
“And history while for the warning of vehement high, and during natures, she notes his many errors, will yet deliberately pronounce that among the eminent men whose bones lie near his, scarcely one has left a more stainless, and none a more splendid name.”
Winston S. Churchill
Savrola
“And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“Any clever person can make plans for winning a war if he has no responsibility for carrying them out.
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“Art is to beauty what honour is to honesty, an unnatural allotropic form.”
Winston S. Churchill
Savrola
“Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre. The greater the general, the more he contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“Because, wherever I have looked, I see that all things are perpetually referred to an eternal standard of fitness, and that right triumphs over wrong, truth over falsehood, beauty over ugliness. Fitness is the general expression! Judged by this standard art and honour have little value.”
Winston S. Churchill
Savrola
“But Governments and peoples do not always take rational decisions. Sometimes they take mad decisions, or one set of people get control who compel all others to obey and aid them in folly.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“But if, on the contrary, you are inclined – late in life though it be – to reconnoitre a foreign sphere of limitless extent, then be persuaded that the first quality that is needed is Audacity.”
Winston S. Churchill
Painting as a Pastime
“But the more firmly Russia can establish herself in the saddle now the farther she will ride in the future and the more precarious our holdfast will become.” (Winston S. Churchill Quotes)
Winston S. Churchill
Triumph and Tragedy
“But you ought to let the Jews have Jerusalem; it is they who made it famous.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“Churchill used words for different purposes: to argue for moral and political causes, to advocate courses of action in the social, national and international spheres, and to tell the story of his own life and that of Britain and its place in the world.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill
“Cold steel and discipline and the slight capital surplus necessary to move and organise armies constituted the sole defences.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“Democracy is not based on violence or terrorism, but on reason, on fair play, on freedom, on respecting the rights of other people.”
Winston S. Churchill
Triumph and Tragedy
“Doubts can be swept away only by deeds.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“During this period I usually managed to take two afternoons a week in the areas under attack in Kent or Sussex in order to see for myself what was happening.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“Eaten bread is soon forgotten. Dangers which are warded off by effective precautions and foresight are never even remembered.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“Everything was duty. It was not merely that nothing else mattered. There was nothing else. One did one’s duty as well as one possibly could, be it great or small, and naturally one deserved no reward.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“Fanaticism is not a cause of war. It is the means which helps savage peoples to fight. It is the spirit which enables them to combine—the great common object before which all personal or tribal disputes become insignificant.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of Communism.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“Foreign Minister cited the Baltic States, in which to-day, one year after the occupation by the Russians, the entire intelligentsia had been wiped out and really terrible conditions prevailed.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“Germany could not gain complete air superiority unless she could knock out our Air Force, and the aircraft industries, some vital portions of which are concentrated at Coventry and Birmingham.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“Go out into the sunlight and be happy with what you see.”
Winston S. Churchill
Painting as a Pastime
“Guard them well, admirals and captains, hardy tars and tall marines; guard them well and guide them true.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“He came early, unwisely as, had he come later, there would have been a better audience to watch his arrival; however, to his untutored mind perhaps this was a matter of little importance.”
Winston S. Churchill
Savrola
“He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill
“He would in any case have saved the British Army in France from the futile slaughter of May, and possibly even discouraged the French from the long and frightful follies of their Spring offensive in Artois in which they squandered nearly a quarter of a million men.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“How hard to build. How easy to evacuate. How hard to capture. How easy to do nothing. How hard to achieve anything. War is action, energy & hazard. These sheep only want to browse among the daisies.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“How little can we foresee the consequences either of wise or unwise action, of virtue or of malice! Without this measureless and perpetual uncertainty the drama of human life would be destroyed.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“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.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“I do not propose to recount the Homeric struggles of the ‘friendlies.’ Little in them is worthy of remembrance; much seeks oblivion.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“I had no idea in those days of the enormous and unquestionably helpful part that humbug plays in the social life of great peoples.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“I have made more bishops than anyone since St. Augustine.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“I have stated that a democracy is always two years behind the dictator.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“I remember that we had a discussion in the war about unity of command, and that Mr. Lloyd George said, “It is not a question of one general being better than another, but of one general being better than two.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“I saw quite plainly that Communism would be the peril civilisation would have to face after the defeat of Nazism and Fascism.”
Winston S. Churchill
Triumph and Tragedy
“I should be unworthy of your confidence and generosity if I did not still cry: Forward, unflinching, unswerving, indomitable, till the whole task is done and the whole world is safe and clean.”
Winston S. Churchill
Triumph and Tragedy
“I want no criticism of America at my table. The Americans criticise themselves more than enough.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“If countries remote from a dispute were among those called upon in the first instance to achieve a settlement the result was likely to be merely vapid and academic discussion.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“If I were asked the difference between Socialism and Communism, I could only reply that the Socialist tries to lead us to disaster by foolish words and the Communist could try to drive us there by violent deeds.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“If the issue were presented to the British as a naked trading away of British possessions for sake of the fifty destroyers it would certainly encounter vehement opposition.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.” (Winston S. Churchill Quotes)
Winston S. Churchill
Painting as a Pastime
“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“In 1933 the students of the Oxford Union, under the inspiration of a Mr. Joad, passed their ever-shameful resolution, “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“In Germany they had no kings. They developed them in Britain from leaders who claimed descent from the ancient gods.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“In our human state there is no separation between public deeds and personal psychology, and the story of the one would be incomplete without the other.”
Winston S. Churchill
Marlborough
“In the autumn of 1942, at the peak of the struggle for Guadalcanal, only three American aircraft-carriers were afloat; a year later there were fifty; by the end of the war there were more than a hundred.”
Winston S. Churchill
Triumph and Tragedy
“In total war it is quite impossible to draw any precise line between military and non-military problems.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“In war all repetitions are perilous. You can do many things with impunity if you do not keep on doing them over and over again.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of what Bismarck called “the Other Man”. The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“In war what you don’t dislike is not usually what the enemy does.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“It appears that the German losses in some of the principal combats were a good deal less than we thought at the time, and that reports on both sides were materially exaggerated.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“It has been well said, ‘there is always more error than design in human affairs.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“It is better to have a world united than a world divided; but it is also better to have a world divided than a world destroyed.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“It is however easier to infuriate Americans than to cow them.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“It is my purpose, as one who lived and acted in these days, first to show how easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented; how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“It is said by several authorities that on being in the saddle he declared, “This day I conquer or die.” Nothing was more unlike him. Months before in England he had used such words to Wratislaw, and assuredly they did not go beyond the truth. But, arrived at the point of action, it is more probable that he made some considerate inquiry about his horse’s forage or his man’s rations.”
Winston S. Churchill
Marlborough
“It is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“It is where the balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity for world-saving decisions presents itself.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“It matters very little whether your judgments of people are true or untrue, and very much whether they are kind or unkind.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill
“It was not through wrong judgment that they failed, but through want of will-power. In such times the Kingdom of Heaven can only be taken by storm.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“It was one of those moments when the prizes and penalties of life seem equally stale and futile.”
Winston S. Churchill
Savrola
“It was our duty to take the fullest advantage of our superiority, and to fight only under conditions which gave solid assurances of victory.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“It would not be right or rational that the Aggressor Power should gain one set of advantages by tearing up all laws, and another set by sheltering behind the innate respect for law of its opponents. Humanity, rather than legality, must be our guide.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“Let it never be said that you crept into the crypt, crapped, and crept out again.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill
“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.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“Libya, Eritrea, Abyssinia, Somaliland, nourished by Italian taxation, comprised a vast region in which nearly a quarter of a million Italian colonists toiled, and began to thrive, under the protection of more than four hundred thousand Italian and native troops.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“London had heavy attacks on the sixteenth and seventeenth; over twenty-three hundred people were killed, more than three thousand seriously injured.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“No community embarks on a great enterprise without fortifying itself with the belief that from some points of view its motives are lofty and disinterested. It is an involuntary tribute, the humble tribute of imperfect beings, to the eternal temples of Truth and Beauty.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same ideals of society and Government, and defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now from the other. The same danger approached the same man from different directions and in different forms, and the same man turned to face it with incomparable weapons, drawn from the same armoury, used in a different quarter, but for the same purpose.” (Winston S. Churchill Quotes)
“No one can tell that he may not someday set a stone rolling or take or neglect some ordinary step which in its consequences will alter the history of the world.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“No one can understand history without continually relating the long periods which are constantly mentioned to the experiences of our own short lives. Five years is a lot. Twenty years is the horizon to most people. Fifty years is antiquity. To understand how the impact of destiny fell upon any generation of men one must first imagine their position and then apply the time-scale of our own lives.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“No operation of a war is more critical than a night-march.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“No prize was to reward the sacrifices of the combatants. Victory was to be bought so dear as to be almost indistinguishable from defeat.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“No Socialist system can be established without a political police.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“Nothing could ever be thrashed out by correspondence. Principals must be brought together, and plans concerted in common.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“Nothing leads more surely to disaster than that a military plan should be pursued with crippled steps and in a lukewarm spirit in the face of continual nagging within the executive circle.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“Of course the introduction of conscription at this stage did not give us an army. It only applied to the men of twenty years of age; they had still to be trained; and after they had been trained they had still to be armed.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“One begins to see, for instance, that painting a picture is like fighting a battle; and trying to paint a picture is, I suppose, like trying to fight a battle. It is, if anything, more exciting than fighting it successfully. But the principle is the same.”
Winston S. Churchill
Painting as a Pastime
“One clear-cut result is worth a dozen wise precautions.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision. Life is a whole, and luck is a whole, and no part of them can be separated from the rest.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill
“One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill
“One thing is absolutely certain, namely, that victory will never be found by taking the line of least resistance.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“Painting is complete as a distraction. I know of nothing which, without exhausting the body more entirely absorbs the mind.”
Winston S. Churchill
Painting as a Pastime
“Past experience carries with its advantages the drawback that things never happen the same way again.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“Power, for the sake of lording it over fellow-creatures or adding to personal pomp, is rightly judged base. But power in a national crisis, when a man believes he knows what orders should be given, is a blessing.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“Promotion should always go by merit, not by age, for services and not for service.”
Winston S. Churchill
Savrola
“Richard had embodied the virtues which men admire in the lion, but there is no animal in nature that combines the contradictory qualities of John. He united the ruthlessness of a hardened warrior with the craft and subtlety of a Machiavellian.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“Since any armed movement against an established Government can be justified only by success, strength is an important revolutionary virtue.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong; and a boy deprived of a father’s care often develops, if he escape the perils of youth, an independence and vigour of thought which may restore in after life the heavy loss of early days.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“Spare the conquered and confront the proud.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill
“St Patrick was a Roman Briton of good family dwelling probably in the Severn valley.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, two of the. noblest men ever born on the American continent.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“Strange as it may seem, the Air Force, except in the air, is the least mobile of all the services. A squadron can reach its destination in a few hours, but its establishments, depots, fuel, spare parts, and workshops take many weeks, and even months, to develop.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“Success always demands a greater effort.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill
“The American chiefs do not like to be outdone in generosity. No people respond more spontaneously to fair play. If you treat Americans well they always want to treat you better.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small State to the wolves is a fatal delusion.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“The best evidence of the fairness of any settlement is the fact that it fully satisfies neither party.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“The British people do not, as is sometimes thought, go to war for calculation, but for sentiment”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“The camel once swallowed, the gnats went down easily enough.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“The Celtic churches therefore received a form of ecclesiastical government which was supported by the loosely knit communities of monks and preachers, and was not in these early decisive periods associated with the universal organisation of the Papacy.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“The determination of the greatest military Power on the Continent to become at the same time at least the second naval Power was an event of first magnitude in world affairs.” (Winston S. Churchill Quotes)
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“The difference between our outlook and the Socialist outlook is the difference between the ladder and the queue. We are for the ladder. Let all try their best to climb. They are for the queue.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“The drastic application of economic sanctions in July 1941 brought to a head the internal crisis in Japanese politics.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“The foundation of the Germanic system was blood and kin.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“The Germans met them in overwhelming strength, and furious fighting began. All but five of the landing party were killed or captured.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“The goddess of Battles visits warriors only once. He who does not grasp her at such a moment never reaches her again.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“The groves which fringed and overhung the river swarmed with tsetse flies of newly-replenished venom and approved malignity.”
Winston S. Churchill
My African Journey
“The House must be a steady stabilising factor in the State, and not an instrument by which the disaffected sections of the Press can attempt to promote one crisis after another.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“The jury system has come to stand for all we mean by English justice, because so long as a case has to be scrutinised by twelve honest men, defendant and plaintiff alike have a safeguard from arbitrary perversion of the law.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“The Late Bronze Age in the southern parts of Britain, according to most authorities, began about 1000 B.C. and lasted until about 400 B.C.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“The machinery of a great party, and still more of a great conspiracy, needed careful and constant attention.”
Winston S. Churchill
Savrola
“The most damnable thing in the world is a servile copyist!”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“The old capital is solitary and deserted. No sound of man breaks the silence of its streets. Only memory broods in the garden where the Pashas used to walk, and the courtyard where the Imperial envoy fell.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“The old wars were decided by their episodes rather than by their tendencies. In this war the tendencies are far more important than the episodes. Without winning any sensational victories we may win this war.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“The problems of the second year of war must be dealt with by the experience of the first year of war. The problems of the third year of war must be met by results observed and understood in the second, and so on.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“The safety of the world requires a new unity in Europe, from which no nation should be permanently outcast.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“The Second World War had indeed been fought to the bitter end in Europe. The vanquished as well as the victors felt inexpressible relief. But for us in Britain and the British Empire, who had alone been in the struggle from the first day to the last and staked our existence on the result, there was a meaning beyond what even our most powerful and most valiant Allies could feel. Weary and worn, impoverished but undaunted and now triumphant, we had a moment that was sublime. We gave thanks to God for the noblest of all His blessings, the sense that we had done our duty.”
Winston S. Churchill
Triumph and Tragedy
“The successful British air attack on the Italian Fleet at Taranto, throwing modern first-class battleships out of action for many months, profoundly impressed the Japanese Navy with the power and possibilities of the new air arm, especially when combined with surprise.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“The sufferings and impoverishment of peoples might arrest their warfare, the collapse of the defeated might still the cannonade, but their hatreds continue unappeased and their quarrels are still unsettled.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“The ugly truth is revealed that fear is the foundation of obedience.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“The uncertainty and importance of the present reduce the past and future to comparative insignificance, and clear the mind of minor worries. And when all is over, memories remain which few men do not hold precious.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill
“The vice of capitalism is that it stands for the unequal sharing of blessings; whereas the virtue of socialism is that it stands for the equal sharing of misery.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“The whole theme of motherhood and family life, with those sweet affections which illuminate it, must be the fountain spring of present happiness and future survival.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“The worst quarrels only arise when both sides are equally in the right and in the wrong.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“The worst result of an habitual use of strong language is that when a special occasion really does arise, there is no way of marking it.”
Winston S. Churchill
Savrola
“Their lives had been different; but one day perhaps he would open this strange book of war, and by the vivid light of personal danger read the lessons it contained.”
Winston S. Churchill
Savrola
“There is always much to be said for not attempting more than you can do and for making a certainty of what you try. But this principle, like others in life and war, has its exceptions.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“There is great danger in trying to have things both ways.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most domineering virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill
“There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is a far worse war or one much harder to win.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“There is not one single social or economic principle or concept in the philosophy of the Russian Bolshevik which has not been realized, carried into action, and enshrined in immutable laws a million years ago by the White Ant.”
“They have destroyed your weapons,” he had told the generals, in effect. “But these weapons would in any case have become obsolete before the next war. That war will be fought with brand-new ones, and the army which is least hampered with obsolete material will have a great advantage.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“They said it was only a ground shark; but I was not wholly reassured. It is as bad to be eaten by a ground shark as by any other.” (Winston S. Churchill Quotes)
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“Thus we see a succession of partisan actions continuing without intermission for nearly twenty years, each injury repeated with interest, each oscillation more violent, each risk more grave, until at last it seemed that the sabre itself must be invoked to cool the blood and the passions that were rife.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“Time after time, history ran over the luddites and romanticists, those who sought to restore the old and delay the new. And every time, history did it with faster, more reliable and more advanced vehicles.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Birth of Britain
“Time was the dominating factor. The extraordinary mobility and unexpectedness of amphibious power can, as has been shown, only be exerted in strict relation to limited periods of time. The surprise, the rapidity, and the intensity of the attack are all dependent on the state of the enemy’s preparations at a given moment.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“To Admiral Cunningham it was against all tradition to abandon the Army in such a crisis. He declared, “It takes the Navy three years to build a new ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“To try to be safe everywhere is to be strong nowhere.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“Trying to maintain good relations with a Communist is like wooing a crocodile. You do not know whether to tickle it under the chin or to beat it over the head. When it opens its mouth you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile or preparing to eat you up!”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“Vengeance is the most costly and dissipating of luxuries.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“Victory is the beautiful, bright-coloured flower. Transport is the stem without which it could never have blossomed. Yet even the military student, in his zeal to master the fascinating combinations of the actual conflict, often forgets the far more intricate complications of supply.”
Winston S. Churchill
The River War
“Virtuous motives, trammelled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“War is a business of terrible pressures, and persons who take part in it must fail if they are not strong enough to withstand them.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“War is a hard school, but the British, once compelled to go there, are attentive pupils.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“Was that the possibility of Singapore having no landward defences no more entered into my mind than that of a battleship being launched without a bottom.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Hinge of Fate
“Wave after wave, dark with storm, crested with foam, surged towards the harbour in which we still sheltered. Should we drive out into the teeth of the gale, or should we bide contented where we were? Yet beyond the breakers was a great hope.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“We are now somewhat readily accepting the proposition that high-explosive shells used in unprecedented and extraordinary quantities will achieve decisive results.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box. And for this Audacity is the only ticket.”
Winston S. Churchill
Painting as a Pastime
“We often hear military experts inculcate the doctrine of giving priority to the decisive theatre. There is a lot in this. But in war this principle, like all others, is governed by facts and circumstances; otherwise strategy would be too easy. It would become a drill-book and not an art; it would depend upon rules and not on an instructed and fortunate judgment of the proportions of an ever-changing scene.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“We shall see how the counsels of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger; how the middle course adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bull’s-eye of disaster.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“Whatever may be your surmises about the enemy or the future, your own action is circumscribed within practical limits. There are only a certain number of alternatives open. Also, you live in a world of reality where theories are constantly being corrected and curbed by experiment. Resultant facts accumulate and govern to a very large extent the next decision.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume I
“When Marshal Foch heard of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles he observed with singular accuracy: “This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Gathering Storm
“When the notes of life ring false, men should correct them by referring to the tuning-fork of death. It is when that clear menacing tone is heard that the love of life grows keenest in the human heart.”
Winston S. Churchill
Savrola
“When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.”
Winston S. Churchill
Triumph and Tragedy
“When we face with a steady eye the difficulties which lie before us, we may derive new confidence from remembering those we have already overcome.”
Winston S. Churchill
The Grand Alliance
“When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed…why should we fear for our future?”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“When you have got a thing where you want, it is a good thing to leave it where it is.”
Winston S. Churchill
Their Finest Hour
“While the Hindu elaborates his argument, the Muslim sharpens his sword. Between these two races and creeds…the gulf is impassable.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill By Himself
“While time is young, while prospects are favourable, while prizes inestimable may be gained, caution, hesitancy, half measures rule and fetter action.”
Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis, Volume II
“Would you rise in the world? You must work while others amuse themselves. Are you desirous of a reputation for courage? You must risk your life. Would you be strong morally or physically? You must resist temptations. All this is paying in advance; that is prospective finance. Observe the other side of the picture; the bad things are paid for afterwards.”
Winston S. Churchill
Savrola
“You cannot afford to indulge even for the shortest period of time in resting on your oars. You must continually drive the vast machine forward at its utmost speed. To lose momentum is not merely to stop, but to fall.”
Winston S. Churchill
Churchill
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