Quotes from Winston S. Churchill

It was one of those moments when the prizes and penalties of life seem equally stale and futile.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders

J'aimais les mots et la sensation de les voir s'ajuster et tomber à leur place comme des pièces de monnaie dans la fente d'un distributeur automatique

the result will require that the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom should exert all their influence to get Russia to act moderately and sensibly and not to flout world opinion.

He came early, unwisely as, had he come later, there would have been a better audience to watch his arrival; however, to his untutored mind perhaps this was a matter of little importance.

Early in 1193, at a moment already full of peril, the grave news reached England that the King was prisoner "somewhere in Germany". There was general and well-founded consternation among the loyal bulk of his subjects. John declared that Richard was dead, appeared in arms, and claimed the crown. That England was held for Richard in his long absence against all these powerful and subtle forces is a proof of the loyalties of the feudal age.

the garden gleams with summer jewelry. We live vy simply—but with all the essentials of life well understood & well provided for—hot baths, cold champagne, new peas, & old brandy.

Sinn Fein,' 'Ourselves alone

No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same ideals of society and Government, and defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now from the other. The same danger approached the same man from different directions and in different forms, and the same man turned to face it with incomparable weapons, drawn from the same armoury, used in a different quarter, but for the same purpose.

was that the possibility of Singapore having no landward defences no more entered into my mind than that of a battleship being launched without a bottom.

It would be an ill day for all the world and for the pair of them if they did not go on working together and marching together and sailing together and flying together, whenever something has to be done for the sake of freedom and fair play all over the world. That is the great hope of the future.

It is not known which of the three chiefs first conceived the master-plan by which the peace of the world is now so well defended that national armaments are falling into increasing neglect.

Time was the dominating factor. The extraordinary mobility and unexpectedness of amphibious power can, as has been shown, only be exerted in strict relation to limited periods of time. The surprise, the rapidity, and the intensity of the attack are all dependent on the state of the enemy's preparations at a given moment.

It is a joke in Britain to say that the War Office is always preparing for the last war. But this is probably true of other departments and of other countries, and it was certainly true of the French Army.

Comme dit Kinglake : un examen si minutieux qu'il finit par placer un objet sous un angle de vision mensonger est un plus mauvais guide qu'un rapide coup d'oeil qui embrasse les choses dans leurs justes proportions.

In the problems which the Almighty sets his humble servants things hardly ever happen the same way twice over, or if they seem to do so there is some variant which stultifies undue generalisation. The human mind, except when guided by extraordinary genius, cannot surmount the established conclusions amid which it has been reared.

Democracy is not based on violence or terrorism, but on reason, on fair play, on freedom, on respecting the rights of other people.

The reformed and placated pirate-mariners brought with them many Danish customs. They had a different notation, which they would have been alarmed to hear described as the "duodecimal system". They thought in twelves instead of tens, and in our own day in certain parts of East Anglia the expression "the long hundred" (i.e., 120) is heard on market-days.

Success is never final.

Their lives had been different; but one day perhaps he would open this strange book of war, and by the vivid light of personal danger read the lessons it contained.

combined to break his reserve; before he knew it, he had joined in a discussion, one of those half cynical, half serious discussions which are characteristic of an age which inquires because it doubts, and doubts the more because it has inquired.

Il ne faut jamais oublié quand un malheur vous frappe, qu'il peut très bien vous épargner un ennui pire encore; ou que, quand vous commettez une lourde erreur, cela peut très bien vous servir mieux que la décision la plus sage. La vie est un tout, la chance est un tout, et on ne peut séparer aucun élément du reste.

all he wanted was toleration, and by the enlightened use of the dispensing power to be the true father of all his people.

If the whole word, except the United States, sank under the ocean, that community could get its living. They carved it out of the prairie and the forest. They're going to have a strong national resurgence in the near future.