Quotes from Winston S. Churchill

Parliament, trial by jury, local government by local citizens, and even the beginnings of a free Press, may be discerned, at any rate in primitive form, by the time Christopher Columbus set sail for the American continent.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance'.

En el Pacífico, había solo cinco estaciones inalámbricas alemanas: Yap, Apia, Nauru, Rabaul y Anguar; estas estaciones fueron destruidas antes de dos meses, a contar desde el principio de la contienda. Después de esto, solo quedaron las estaciones de T. S. H. de a bordo, con las que era muy peligroso lanzar una sola palabra en el espacio.

Bullets--to a philosopher my dear Mamma--are not worth considering. I do not believe the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending.

Many things were adopted in the war which we were told were technically impossible, but patience, perseverance, and above all the spur of necessity under war conditions, made men's brains act with greater vigour, and science responded to the demands….

Here we stir the embers of the past and light the beacons of the future. Old flags are raised anew; the passions of vanished generations awake; beneath the shell-torn soil of the twentieth century the bones of long dead warriors and victims are exposed, and the wail of lost causes sounds in the wind.

The facts remain that the Serbian reply was not read by the man on whose decision the fate of the world still hung, until nearly sixty hours after it had been delivered at Belgrade; and that before he could act upon it, the irrevocable declaration of war had gone forth from Vienna.

democracies are apt to think with their hearts rather than with their heads, and a general's business is, or should be, to use his head for planning.

high standards of experience, of official routine, and of method, which are the qualifications of the Civil Service.

Mr. Martin and Mr. Rowan

did not overlook the broad principle that in war as in life everything is relative.

The war impulse of Italy has been destroyed, and that unhappy country is paying a terrible penalty for allowing itself to be misled by false and criminal guides. How much easier it is to join bad companions than to shake them off!

at a touch of external difficulties or menace all these fierce internal controversies would disappear for the time being, and we should be brought into line and into tune. But why is it that men are so constituted that they can only lay aside their own domestic quarrels under the impulse of what I will call a higher principle of hatred?…

One always measures friendship by how they show up in bad weather.

Germany only paid, or was able to pay, the indemnities later extorted because the United States was profusely lending money to Europe, and especially her. In fact, during the three years 1926 to 1929 the United States was receiving back in the form of debt-installment indemnities from all quarters about one-fifth of the money which she was lending to Germany with no chance of repayment. However, everybody seemed pleased and appeared to think this might go on for ever.

A situation had been created where hundreds of officials had only to do their prescribed duty to their respective countries to wreck the world. They did their duty.

The unnatural principle of human sacrifice was carried by the British Druids to a ruthless pitch. The mysterious priesthoods of the forests bound themselves and their votaries together by the most deadly sacrament that men can take. Here, perhaps, upon these wooden altars of a sullen island, there lay one of the secrets, awful, inflaming, unifying, of the tribes of Gaul. And whence did this sombre custom come?

the United States, allowed conditions to be gradually built up which led to the very climax they dreaded most. They have only to repeat the same well-meaning, short-sighted behaviour towards the new problems which in singular resemblance confront us to-day to bring about a third convulsion from which none may live to tell the tale.

Dormía, corrientemente, una hora más por la mañana; me llamaban a las ocho en vez de las siete, y, si era posible, echaba una siesta de una hora después de almorzar. Esto me permitía trabajar continuamente hasta la una o las dos de la noche sin sentirme fatigado.

Of all the tasks ever set to a Navy none could have appeared more baffling than that of sheltering this enormous traffic and groping deep below the surface of the sea for the deadly elusive foe. It was in fact a game of blind man's buff in an unlimited space of three dimensions.

The fighting man shall from the sun Take warmth, and life from the growing earth; Speed with the light-foot wind to run, And with the trees to newer birth, And find when fighting shall be done, Great rest and fullness after dearth. The thundering line of battle stands, And in the air Death moans and sings; But day shall clasp him with strong hands, And night shall fold him in soft wings.' JULIAN GRENFELL. Flanders, April, 1915.

I remember that we had a discussion in the war about unity of command, and that Mr. Lloyd George said, It is not a question of one general being better than another, but of one general being better than two.

Churchill used words for different purposes: to argue for moral and political causes, to advocate courses of action in the social, national and international spheres, and to tell the story of his own life and that of Britain and its place in the world.

there followed a period lasting for about three months of Turkish hesitation and delay, having the effect of consummate duplicity