Quotes from Winston Churchill

India is a geographical term. It is no more a United Nation than the Equator.

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

Say what you have to say and the first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending - sit down.

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!

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

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 honour and good sense.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.

There are few virtues which the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.

We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and 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.

We must have a better word than "prefabricated", why not "ready-made"?

I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

Politics is more dangerous than war, for in war you are only killed once.

The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

It may well be that we shall by a process of sublime irony have reached a state in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.

War is horrible, but slavery is worse.

We must learn from misfortune the means of future strength.

[Much] as war attracts me and fascinates my mind with its tremendous situations, I feel more deeply every year . . . what vile and wicked folly and barbarism it all is.

We hoped to land a wild cat that would tear out the bowels of the Boche. Instead we have stranded a vast whale with its tail flopping about in the water.