Winston Churchill

Table of contents

1 (1874-1965) 1.1 Verified 1.2 Attributed 1.3 Falsely attributed or misquoted

(1874-1965)

Verified

• "A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward."
  • Source: speech in the House of Commons, November 29, 1944

• "For myself, I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else."
  • Source: speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet, London, November 9, 1954

• "Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt: We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire... Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job."
  • Source: BBC radio broadcast, Feb 9, 1941

• "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
  • Source: Radio speech, 1939

• "I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat'."
  • Source: Hansard, May 13, 1940
  • promise made upon taking office as prime minister

• "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more."
  • Source: Roving Commission: My Early Life, 1930, Chapter 9

• "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
  • Source: Hansard, November 11, 1947

• "Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
  • Source: Speech, 1941, Harrow School

• "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many, to so few".
  • Source: compliment paid to the during the Battle of Britain

• "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
  • Source: Speech in November 1942

• "One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'."
  • Source: Second World War (1948)

• "So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."
  • Source: Hansard, November 12, 1936

• "The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst."
  • Source: Hansard, June 10, 1941

• "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
  • Source: Speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943

• "We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it."
  • Source: speech in the House of Commons, July 14, 1940

• "The object of presenting medals, stars, and ribbons is to give pride and pleasure to those who have deserved them."
  • Source: speech in the House of Commons, 1944

• "Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse."
  • Source: To Royal Academy of Arts, Time, May 11 1953

• "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."
  • Source: Speech addressing the House of Commons on June 4, 1940.

• "Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us now. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. 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 say, This was their finest hour.
  • Source: Speech before the House of Commons on June 18, 1940

• "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."
  • Source: Speech on March 5, 1946 at Fulton, Missouri (full text at the Churchill Centre)

• "The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair."
  • Source: End of last major speech to the House of Commons, March 1, 1955

• "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

• "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

• "A modest man, who has much to be modest about"
  • Referring to:

• "A sheep in sheep's clothing"
  • Referring to:

• "Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed."

• America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these isms wouldn't today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government--and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives. [purportedly, interview in New York Enquirer 1936]

• "Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all."

• "Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash." (According to the Falsely Attributed Quotations page at the Churchill Centre, Churchill denied having said this, but expressed the wish that he had.)

• "Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."

• "This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put."
  • (Purportedly upon being accused of ending his sentances with prepositions. Had he said "This is the sort of pedantry I will not put up with.", he would have committed the same offense he was accused of.)

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

• Observations on WWI: "When all was over, torture and cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and these were of doubtful utility."

• "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

• "I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns."

• "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral effects should be good, and it would spread a lively terror."

• "I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic."

• "I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents."

• "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."
  • (But WC's black cat, Nelson, is reputed to have had a chair at Cabinet.)

• "It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time."

• "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."

• "Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room."

• "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

• "One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half."

• "Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught."

• "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."

• "The price of greatness is responsibility."

• "The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning."

• "The water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable, we had to add whiskey. By diligent effort, I learned to like it."

• "There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true."

• "We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."

• "When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home."

• "When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."

• "When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite."

• And you, madam, are ugly. But in the morning I shall be sober.
  • to a lady who accused him of being drunk

• Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea.
• Winston Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it.

• "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

• "To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often."

• "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."