Quotes from Winston Churchill

Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop. [ New Statesman interview, 7 January 1939]

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.

Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

There is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.

There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

The most important thing about education is appetite.

You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.' - To Neville Chamberlain

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

I'm bored with it all. - Last Words

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

Danger: if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.