Quotes from Winston S. Churchill

The great impediment to action is not discussion, but the want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action.'—PERICLES.

Cincinnati, I thought, was the most beautiful of the inland cities of the Union. From the tower of its unsurpassed hotel the city spreads far and wide its pageant of crimson, purple and gold, laced by silver streams that are great rivers.

precarious tranquillity had indeed been achieved in Greece, and it seemed that a free democratic Government, founded on universal suffrage and secret ballot, might be established there within a reasonable time. But Roumania and Bulgaria had passed into the grip of Soviet military occupation, Hungary and Yugoslavia lay in the shadow of the battlefield, and Poland, though liberated from the Germans, had merely exchanged one conqueror for another.

The cause of quarrel had disappeared on paper at the same time as the fighting all over Europe began.

You cannot afford to indulge even for the shortest period of time in resting on your oars. You must continually drive the vast machine forward at its utmost speed. To lose momentum is not merely to stop, but to fall.

As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism.

But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite. ***

Those two impostors,' Triumph and Disaster, never played their pranks more shamelessly than in the Great War. When men have done their duty and done their best, have shirked no labour and flinched from no decision that it was their task to take, there is no disgrace in eventual personal failure. They are but good comrades who fall in the earlier stages of an assault, which others, profiting by their efforts and experiences, ultimately carry to victory.

He was a cut flower in a vase; fair to see, yet bound to die, and to die very soon if the water was not constantly renewed.

When the notes of life ring false, men should correct them by referring to the tuning-fork of death. It is when that clear menacing tone is heard that the love of life grows keenest in the human heart.

Para crear las condiciones desfavorables para sí misma, en las que Alemania produjo la guerra, eran, sin embargo, todavía necesarios muchos actos de absoluta imprudencia por parte de sus gobernantes.

A war postponed may be a war prevented. The combinations of States vary as years pass. The Ententes or Alliances of one decade may have lost their savour in the next. Time and peace solve many problems, and men's thoughts move on to new spheres.

The invaders brought into Britain a principle common to all Germanic tribes, namely, the use of the money power to regulate all the legal relations of men. If there was any equality it was equality within each social grade. If there was liberty it was mainly liberty for the rich. If there were rights they were primarily the rights of property. There was no crime committed which could not be compounded by a money payment.

It has been well said, 'there is always more error than design in human affairs.

The submarine is the only vessel of war which does not fight its like.

We live in a world of 'ifs.' 'What happened,' is singular; 'what might have happened,' legion.

People who are not prepared to do unpopular things and to defy clamour are not fit to be Ministers in times of stress.

Pictures of heroism and triumph only tempt those who know nothing of the sufferings and terrors of war.

this had been a war, not of governments, but of peoples. The whole life-energy of the greatest nations had been poured out in wrath and slaughter.

Great Britain will certainly do her utmost to organise a coalition resistance to any act of aggression committed by any Power, and it is believed that the United States will co-operate with her, and even possibly take the lead of the world, on account of her numbers and strength, in the good work of preventing such tendencies to aggression before they break into open war.

Lenin was to Karl Marx what Omar was to Mahomet. He translated faith into acts. He devised the practical methods by which the Marxian theories could be applied in his own time.

The worst result of an habitual use of strong language is that when a special occasion really does arise, there is no way of marking it.

meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same.

War is a business of terrible pressures, and persons who take part in it must fail if they are not strong enough to withstand them.