Quotes from Winston S. Churchill

No prize was to reward the sacrifices of the combatants. Victory was to be bought so dear as to be almost indistinguishable from defeat.

I do not propose to recount the Homeric struggles of the 'friendlies.' Little in them is worthy of remembrance; much seeks oblivion.

How are you off for drink? We have got everything in the world on board here. Can you catch?' and almost immediately a large bottle of champagne was thrown from the gunboat to the shore. It fell in the waters of the Nile, but happily where a gracious Providence decreed them to be shallow and the bottom soft. I nipped into the water up to my knees, and reaching down seized the precious gift which we bore in triumph back to our mess.

The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. Winston Churchill in a letter to Prime Minister Asquith, advocating the forced sterilisation of disabled people

Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt.

Democracy is not based on violence or terrorism, but on reason, on fair play, on freedom, on respecting the rights of other people. Democracy is no harlot to be picked up in the street by a man with a tommy gun. I trust the people, the mass of the people, in almost any country, but I like to make sure that it is the people and not a gang of bandits who think that by violence they can overturn constituted authority

Past experience carries with its advantages the drawback that things never happen the same way again.

There is always a strong case for doing nothing, especially for doing nothing yourself.

The sufferings and impoverishment of peoples might arrest their warfare, the collapse of the defeated might still the cannonade, but their hatreds continue unappeased and their quarrels are still unsettled.

In the square in front of the Chancellery there was however a considerable crowd. When I got out of the car and walked about among them, except for one old man who shook his head disapprovingly, they all began to cheer. My hate had died with their surrender and I was much moved by their demonstrations, and also by their haggard looks and threadbare clothes. Then

All comes out even at the end of the day, and all comes out still more even when all the days are over.' —VOLTAIRE

The best method of acquiring flexibility is to have three or four plans for all the probable contingencies, all worked out with the utmost detail.

I must thank the Hon. Gentleman for making me acquainted with the word "outwith," with which I had not previously had the pleasure of making acquaintance. For the benefit of English Members I may say that it is translated "outside the scope of." I thought it was a misprint at first.

Much action and the play of forces even on a huge scale and with enormous material effects is often irrelevant, and counts for little or nothing in the final result: but along the chain of commanding causation even the smallest events are vital.

They combine in the most deadly manner the qualities of the warrior and the slave. They do not value freedom themselves, and the spectacle of it in others is hateful to them.

you never can tell whether bad luck may not after all turn out to be good luck.

we must have a better word than "prefabricated" [for houses]. Why not "ready-made"?

The plain people were busy getting their daily bread. They had no time to listen to all the frantic pleadings and protests which arose. One tale was good until another was told, and probably both were untrue and certainly very difficult to understand.

It is said by several authorities that on being in the saddle he declared, "This day I conquer or die." Nothing was more unlike him. Months before in England he had used such words to Wratislaw, and assuredly they did not go beyond the truth. But, arrived at the point of action, it is more probable that he made some considerate inquiry about his horse's forage or his man's rations.

Drake was finishing his game of bowls;

No war is so sanguinary as the war of exhaustion.

A modern dictator with the resources of science at his disposal can easily lead the public on from day to day, destroying all persistency of thought and aim, so that memory is blurred by the multiplicity of daily news and judgment baffled by its perversion

Now we are the masters of our fate, that the task which has been set us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause and an unconquerable willpower, salvation will not be denied us.

Gunpowder, which we have seen used in the puny bombards which, according to some authorities, Edward had fired at Crécy and against Calais, was soon decisively to establish itself as a practical factor in war and in human affairs based on war. If cannon had not been invented the English mastery of the long-bow might have carried them even farther in their Continental domination.