Winston Churchill Quotations | Page 4

Victory is not final. Defeat is not failure. It's all about courage.

From the days of Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx... this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society... has been steadily growing.

Expert knowledge is limited knowledge

Those good at war aren't good at peace, and those good at peace aren't good at war.

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

The reservist is twice the citizen.

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

The most important thing about education is appetite.

You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.

Your greatest fears are created by your imagination. Don't give in to them.

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?

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

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

History is written by the victors.

All dogs look up to you. All cats look down on you. Only the pig looks at you as an equal

Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose

Never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

The unforgivable sin of Hitler's Germany was to develop a new economic system by which the international bankers were deprived of their profits.

The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.

The flags of the Confederate States of America were very important and a matter of great pride to those citizens living in the Confederacy. They are also a matter of great pride for their descendants as part of their heritage and history.

This truth may be unfashionable, unpalatable, no doubt unpopular, but, if it is the truth, the story of mankind shows that war was universal and unceasing for millions of years before armaments were invented or armies organized. Indeed, the lucid intervals of peace and order only occurred in human history after armaments in the hands of strong governments have come into being, and civilization in every age has been nursed only in cradles guarded by superior weapons and superior discipline.

The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.

I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.

Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea. Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it.

If you destroy a free market you create a black market.

Christopher Columbus was the first socialist: he didn?t know where he was going, he didn?t know where he was? and he did it all at taxpayers expense.

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.

When we run out of money, we have to start thinking.

All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.

Who is not liberal when young, does not have a heart. Who is not conservative when old, does not have a brain.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been

Success is the ability to continue to move through total disaster.

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

The Fascists of the future will be the anti-fascists.

Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.

Mr. Churchill your drunk!" Mr. Churchill: "And you, Lady Astor, are ugly. As for my condition, it will pass by the morning. You, however, will still be ugly.

Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.

We are with Europe but not of it. We are linked, not combined. We are interested and associated, not absorbed. And should European statesmen address us in the words that were used of old - Shall I speak for thee to the King or the Captain of the Host? - we should reply with the Shunamite woman: "Nay sir, for we dwell among our own people".

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.

Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.

Mr Churchill, to what do you attribute your success in life? Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down.

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper-no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point.

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.

A nation which has forgotten its past can have no future.

We see nothing but good and hope in a richer, freer, more contented European commonalty. But we have our own dreams and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.

Without execution, thinking is mere idleness.

If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.

Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] ... by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks ... to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly.

Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low calibre & men of straw. They will have sweet tongues & silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power & India will be lost in political squabbles. A day would come when even air & water would be taxed in India.

Give me the facts, and I will twist them the way I want, to suit my argument.

Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.

The question which we must ask ourselves is not whether we like or do not like what is going on, but what we are going to do about it.

Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear - I fear greatly - the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar, even more loudly, even more widely.

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

Golf. Trying to knock a tiny ball into an even smaller hole with implements ill suited to the purpose.

There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is England.

Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

If you cannot read all your books...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 you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.

Smoking Cigars is like falling in love. First, you are attracted by its shape; you stay for its flavor, and you must always remember never, never to let the flame go out!

I drink a great deal. I sleep a little, and I smoke cigar after cigar. That is why I am in two-hundred-percent form.

It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.

When someone says to me, Ugh, you smoke. I reply, Ugh, you're ugly. I can quit smoking.

As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us.

We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanly directed in the first instance.

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge

Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?" Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... " Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?" Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!" Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price

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.

Saving is a fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you.

There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.

It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.

Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are billed to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death.

It has not fallen to your lot to command great armies. You had to create them, organize them and inspire them.

I hate nobody except Hitler--and that is professional.

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.

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.

Listing your personal milestones is like storing a pocketful of sunshine for a rainy day. Sometimes our best is simply not enough.... We have to do what is required.

Wars are not won by evacuations.

I am convinced that there is no smarter, handier, or more adaptable body of troops in the world.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

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 do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilized tribes.

Never, never, never give up.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

The Pashtun tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian Every large house is a real feudal fortress....Eve ry family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud....Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid.

You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.

The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery.

You ask, What is our policy? I will say; 'It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.' You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory-victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

A single glass of champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration. The nerves are braced; the imagination is stirred, the wits become more nimble.

It's Never Over 'till it's over! Never Give Up! Never.

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.

He who fails to plan is planning to fail.

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.'

Good night, then - sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly on all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn.

It is my belief, you cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you understand the most amusing.

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.