Winston S. Churchill

“Safari, so goody.”

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."— Churchill's response”

“All was there—the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.”

“Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.”

“Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts ... genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation ... the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality ...though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries [WWII]”

“History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.”

“We shall not flag or fail. 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.”

“it is the people who control the Government, not the Government the people.”

“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

“The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.”

“Be a peg, hammered into the frozen ground, immovable.”

“Success always demands a greater effort.”

“We are still masters of our fate.We are still captains of our souls.”

“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.”

“If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”

“If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.”

“If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

“Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.”

“Good and great are seldom in the same man. ”

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

“How fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave.”

“The way to achieve happiness is to try for perfection that is impossible to achieve, and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it.”

“Don't interrupt me while I'm interrupting.”

“You create your own universe as you go along.”

“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'.”

“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.”

“This paper, by its very length, defends itself from ever being read.”

“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”

“Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.”

“The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.”

“Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred bloodsoaked battlefields.”

“Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.”

“Although prepared for martyrdom, I prefer that it be postponed.”

“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained.”

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

“You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth.”

“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”

“This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.”

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

“Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.”

“We have not journeyed all this way because we are made of sugar candy.”

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”

“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.”

“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.”

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”

“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 for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

“You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.”

“The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.”

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.”