Quotes from Winston Churchill

I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

We build dwellings and thereafter they build us.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

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

Nations that went down fighting rose again, but those who surrendered tamely were finished.

It is my purpose, as one who lived and acted in these days, first to show how easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented; how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous...

Now that we have run out of money we have to think.

It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them.

As one's fortunes are reduced, one spirit must expand to fill the void.

Of course I'm an egoist. Where do you get if you aren't?

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

The most frightful of all spectacles is the strength of the civilization without its mercy.

2. We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man 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.

Not an hour is lost that is spent in the saddle.

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?

If the present tries to sit in judgment on the past, it will lose the future.

Churchill kept perspective on the crowds that gathered to hear him speak by conceding they would be twice as big if gathered to see him hanged.

All I want is compliance with my wishes, after reasonable discussion.

Go out into the sunlight and be happy with what you see.

We are the masters of our fate.