Quotes by Sir Winston Churchill


A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
– Sir Winston Churchill

We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
– Sir Winston Churchill

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
– Sir Winston Churchill

Never give up on something that you can't go a day without thinking about.
– Sir Winston Churchill

If you're going through hell, keep going.
– Sir Winston Churchill

Continuous effort, not strength or intelligence is the key to unlocking our potential.
– Sir Winston Churchill
A joke is a very serious thing.
– Sir Winston Churchill
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
– Sir Winston Churchill
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
– Sir Winston Churchill
A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
– Sir Winston Churchill
A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Advertising nourishes the consuming power of men. It sets up before a man the goal of a better home, better clothing, better food for himself and his family. It spurs individual exertion and greater production.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Air power can either paralyze the enemy's military action or compel him to devote to the defense of his bases and communications a share of his straitened resources far greater that what we need in the attack.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Although present on the occasion, I have no clear recollection of the events leading up to it.
– Sir Winston Churchill
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
– Sir Winston Churchill
At every crisis the Kaiser crumpled. In defeat he fled; in revolution he abdicated; in exile he remarried.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
– Sir Winston Churchill
By swallowing evil words unsaid, no one has ever harmed his stomach.
– Sir Winston Churchill
[Clement Attle is] a sheep in sheep's clothing.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Clement Attlee is a modest man who has a good deal to be modest about.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities... because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Death came very easily to her. She had lived such an innocent and loving life of service to others and held such a simple faith, that she had no fears at all and did not seem to mind very much.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
– Sir Winston Churchill
For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.
– Sir Winston Churchill
For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.
– Sir Winston Churchill
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.
– Sir Winston Churchill
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
– Sir Winston Churchill
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
– Sir Winston Churchill
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I also hope that I sometimes suggested to the lion the right place to use his claws.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.
– Sir Winston Churchill
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.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I am bored with it all.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I am easily satisfied with the very best.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence-which is a noble thing.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I had no idea of the enormous and unquestionably helpful part that humbug plays in the social life of great peoples dwelling in a state of democratic freedom.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I have never accepted what many people have kindly said-namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I like a man who grins when he fights.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I never worry about action, but only inaction.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I shall always be glad to have seen it-for the same reason Papa gave for being glad to have seen Lisbon-namely, that it will be unnecessary ever to see it again.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I was only the servant of my country and had I, at any moment, failed to express her unflinching resolve to fight and conquer, I should at once have been rightly cast aside.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I'm just preparing my impromptu remarks.
– Sir Winston Churchill
If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.
– Sir Winston Churchill
If I was your wife Sir, I'd poison you! Madam, if you were my wife, I'd let you!
– Sir Winston Churchill
If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.
– Sir Winston Churchill
If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.
– Sir Winston Churchill
If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
– Sir Winston Churchill
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.
– Sir 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 a third time-a tremendous whack.
– Sir Winston Churchill
If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
– Sir Winston Churchill
In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.
– Sir Winston Churchill
In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.
– Sir Winston Churchill
In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
– Sir Winston Churchill
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
– Sir Winston Churchill
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.
– Sir Winston Churchill
It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.
– Sir Winston Churchill
It is a gaping wound, whenever one touches it and removes the bandages and plasters of daily life.
– Sir Winston Churchill
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
– Sir Winston Churchill
It is a remarkable comment on our affairs that the former prime minister of a great sovereign state should thus be received as an honorary citizen of another.
– Sir Winston Churchill
It is all right to rat, but you can't re-rat.
– Sir Winston Churchill
It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.
– Sir Winston Churchill
It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.
– Sir Winston Churchill
It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
– Sir Winston Churchill
It may be that we shall by a process of sublime irony have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.
– Sir Winston Churchill
It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion's heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years men will still say, This was their finest hour.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Moral of the Work. In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Mr. Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right.
– Sir Winston Churchill
My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto.
– Sir Winston Churchill
My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.
– Sir Winston Churchill
My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.
– Sir Winston Churchill
My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
– Sir Winston Churchill
No comment is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.
– Sir Winston Churchill
No crime is so great as daring to excel.
– Sir Winston Churchill
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
– Sir Winston Churchill