Quotes from Winston S. Churchill

Anyone who was not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, while anyone who was still a liberal at 40 had no head.

Occasionally a man stumbles over the truth. Most dust themselves off and continue walking as though nothing had happened.

This is not the end its only the begninning

We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together. On that system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilization.

In one respect a cavalry charge is very like ordinary life. So long as you are all right, firmly in your saddle, your horse in hand, and well armed, lots of enemies will give you a wide berth. But as soon as you have lost a stirrup, have a rein cut, have dropped your weapon, are wounded, or your horse is wounded, then is the moment when from all quarters enemies rush upon you. Such

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

In war-time," I said, "truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

Democracy is more vindictive than cabinets, the wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.

The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.

MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.

Bolsheviks create their own difficulties which they successfully overcame later.

To try to be safe everywhere is to be strong nowhere.

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, Wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, Are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake." —Lady Diana Cooper, 1965

I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart, that no Socialist system can be established without a political police…No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.

In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of what Bismarck called "the Other Man". The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare

Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?

The worst quarrels only arise when both sides are equally in the right and in the wrong.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: 'This was their finest hour.

Not to have an adequate air force in the present state of the world is to compromise the foundations of national freedom and independence.

Cromwell's imperious words to the Long Parliament: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

All great movements, every vigorous impulse that a community may feel, become perverted and distorted as time passes

Time after time, history ran over the luddites and romanticists, those who sought to restore the old and delay the new. And every time, history did it with faster, more reliable and more advanced vehicles.

To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.

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