Quotes from Winston Churchill

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf.

These are not dark days: these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived.

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 made to be wooed and won by youth.

My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.

The British Empire and the United States will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage. For my own part, looking out upon the future, I do not view the process with any misgivings.

A cat will look down to a man. A dog will look up to a man. But a pig will look you straight in the eye and see his equal.

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

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

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount.

Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.

Fanatic. One who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

For myself I am an optimist--it does not seem to be much use being anything else.

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into a even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill- designed for the purpose.

Lady Astor: Sir, if you were my husband I would put arsenic in your tea! Churchill: If I were your husband I would drink it!

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Commonwealth and the Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

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.

Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.