Quotes by Winston Churchill
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.
~Winston Churchill~
Adlai Stevenson, himself a notable speaker,
often reminisced about his last meeting with
Churchill. I asked him on whom or what he
had based his oratorical style. Churchill replied,
"It was an American statesman who inspired me
and taught me how to use every note of the human voice
like an organ." Winston then to my amazement started
to quote long excerpts from Bourke Cockran's speeches
of 60 years before. "He was my model," Churchill said.
"I learned from him how to hold thousands in thrall."
~Winston Churchill~
Laws just or unjust may govern men's actions.
Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words.
The machinery of propaganda may pack their
minds with falsehood and deny them truth for
many generations of time. But the soul of man
thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can
be awakened by a spark coming from God knows
where and in a moment the whole structure of
lies and oppression is on trial for its life.
~Winston Churchill~
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. What is the worth of all this?
The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only
shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity
of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through
life without this shield, because we are so often
mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting
of our calculations; but with this shield, however the
fate may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.
~Winston Churchill~
We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end.
We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas
and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence
and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our
island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on
the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall
fight in the hills; we shall never surrender....And if,
which I do not for a moment believe, this island or
a large part of it were subjugated and starving,
then our empires beyond the seas, armed and
guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the fight,
until in God's own time the new world in its power and
might steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the old.
~Winston Churchill~
I am certainly not one of those who need to
be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.
~Winston Churchill~
This is no time to speak of the hopes of the
future, or the broader world which lies beyond
our struggles and our victory. We have to win
that world for our children. We have to win it by
our sacrifices. We have not won it yet. The crisis
is upon us....In this strange, terrible world war 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. The
mine, the factory, the dockyard, the salt sea waves,
the fields to till, the home, the hospital, the chair of
the scientist, the pulpit of the preacher —
from the highest to the humblest tasks, all are
of equal honor; all have their part to play.
~Winston Churchill~
"Not in vain" may be the pride of those who
survived and the epitaph of those who fell.
~Winston Churchill~
Our inheritance of well-founded, slowly conceived codes
of honor, morals and manners, the passionate convictions
which so many hundreds of millions share together of the
principles of freedom and justice, are far more precious to
us than anything which scientific discoveries could bestow.
~Winston Churchill~
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.
~Winston Churchill~
In the past we have had a light which flickered,
in the present we have a light which flames,
and in the future there will be a light
which shines over all the land and sea.
~Winston Churchill~
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, has its exceptions.
~Winston Churchill~
The surest road to health, say what they will,
Is never to suppose we shall be ill;
Most of those evils we poor mortals know,
From doctors and imagination flow.
~Winston Churchill~
We have not journeyed all this way across
the centuries, across the oceans, across
the mountains, across the prairies,
because we are made of sugar candy.
~Winston Churchill~
It is better to be making the news than
taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.
~Winston Churchill~
Character may be manifested in the great
moments, but it is made in the small ones.
~Winston Churchill~
A lie gets halfway around the world before
the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
~Winston Churchill~
Success is not final, failure is not fatal:
it is the courage to continue that counts.
~Winston Churchill~
Personally I am always ready to learn,
although I do not always like being taught.
~Winston Churchill~
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us.
Cats look down on us.
Pigs treat us as equals.
~Winston Churchill~
In those days he was wiser than he is now
— he used frequently to take my advice.
~Winston Churchill~
The farther backwards you can look,
the farther forward you are likely to see.
~Winston Churchill~
Treat your friends as you do your
pictures, and place them in their best light.
~Winston Churchill~
Don't argue about difficulties.
The difficulties will argue for themselves.
~Winston Churchill~
This is one of those cases in which
the imagination is baffled by the facts.
~Winston Churchill~
A fanatic is one who can't change his
mind and won't change the subject.
~Winston Churchill~
This is no time for ease and comfort.
It is the time to dare and endure.
~Winston Churchill~
I have taken more out of alcohol
than alcohol has taken out of me.
~Winston Churchill~
Success is going from failure to
failure without loss of enthusiasm.
~Winston Churchill~
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.
~Winston Churchill~
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 Churchill~
If you have an important point to make, don't try
to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the
point once. Then come back and hit it again.
Then hit it the third time — a tremendous whack.
~Winston Churchill~
Vast and fearsome as the human scene has become,
personal contact of the right people, in the right places,
at the right time, may yet have a potent and valuable
part to play in the cause of peace which is in our hearts.
~Winston Churchill~
I think "No comment" is a splendid expression. I am
using it again and again. I got it from Sumner Welles.
To reporters at the Washington airport, after conferring
with President Truman at the White House, February 12, 1946.
~Winston Churchill~
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition
is something up with which I will not put.
~Winston Churchill~
Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal,
has not heart; and any man who is over 30,
and is not a conservative, has no brains.
~Winston Churchill~
There is no worse mistake in public leadership
than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away.
~Winston Churchill~
My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had
to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
~Winston Churchill~
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link
in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
~Winston Churchill~
"Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea!"
"And if you were my wife, I would drink it!"
~Winston Churchill~
History unfolds itself by strange and
unpredictable paths. We have little control
over the future; and none at all over the past.
~Winston Churchill~
Danger — if you meet it promptly and
without flinching, you will reduce the danger
by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
~Winston Churchill~
I always avoid prophesying beforehand,
because it is a much better policy to
prophesy after the event has already taken place.
~Winston Churchill~
The United States is a land of free speech.
Nowhere is speech freer — not even here where we
sedulously cultivate it even in its most repulsive form.
~Winston Churchill~
I like a man who grins when he fights.
~Winston Churchill~
Eating words has never given me indigestion.
~Winston Churchill~
We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.
~Winston Churchill~
We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm.
~Winston Churchill~
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
~Winston Churchill~
If you destroy a free market,
you create a black market.
~Winston Churchill~
No one can guarantee success
in war, but only deserve it.
~Winston Churchill~
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
~Winston Churchill~
Everyone has his day and
some days last longer than others.
~Winston Churchill~
When you have to kill a man,
it costs nothing to be polite.
~Winston Churchill~
Nothing in life is so exhilarating
as to be shot at without result.
~Winston Churchill~
We have a lot of anxieties, and
one cancels out another very often.
~Winston Churchill~
I am an optimist. It does not seem
too much use being anything else.
~Winston Churchill~
I am always ready to learn, although
I do not always like being taught.
~Winston Churchill~
song playing....Boys