Quotes from Winston Churchill

I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.

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

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

He has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts.

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

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.

Without execution, thinking is mere idleness.

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.

Give us the tools, and we will finish the job

There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away.

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

The difference between mere management and leadership is communication.

We must not lose our faculty to dare, particularly in dark days.

Leadership is the intelligent use of power.

No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

[Should Britain fail, then the entire world would] sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister ... by the lights of perverted science.

A communist is like a crocodile: when it opens its mouth you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile or preparing to eat you up.