Quotes About Leadership

Churchill's post-war bodyguard, Ron Golding, who was an RAF squadron leader in 1940, recalled, 'After those speeches, we wanted the Germans to come.

When Reynaud asked what would happen when the Germans attempted to invade Britain, Churchill replied, 'I haven't thought that out very carefully, but, broadly speaking, I should propose to drown as many as possible of them on the way over, and then "frapper sur la tête" [knock on the head] anyone who managed to crawl ashore.

Napoleone di Buonaparte, as he signed himself until manhood, was born in Ajaccio, one of the larger towns on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, just before noon on Tuesday, August 15, 1769.

The Italian city-state of Genoa had nominally ruled Corsica for over two centuries, but rarely tried to extend her control beyond the coastal towns into the mountainous interior, where the Corsicans were fiercely independent. In 1755 Corsica's charismatic nationalist leader, Pasquale Paoli, proclaimed an independent republic, a notion that became

One of the pieces of advice that Churchill had given Georges Clemenceau during the Great War had been 'to forget old quarrels … In England we … make many muddles, but we always keep more or less together.

Me dicen que hay algunos individuos a los que es preciso aislar por la comisión de viles agresiones. De ser así, solo tengo que manifestar una cosa: "¡Adelante!". Si un hombre público permitiera que la simple amenaza de la violencia personal alterara el rumbo de sus planes sería indigno de la más mínima muestra de respeto o confianza».55

when an MP told him that the public demanded all-out bombing of German civilians, especially in Berlin, Churchill replied, 'My dear sir, this is a military and not a civilian war. You and others may desire to kill women and children. We desire (and have succeeded in our desire) to destroy German military objectives. I quite appreciate your point. But my motto is "Business before pleasure.

Andrew Roberts

Andrew Roberts

Churchill also kept pigs and had a wire brush attached to a long stick in order to scratch their backs. 'Dogs look up to you,' he told an aide in 1952, 'cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.

Hatred plays the same part in Government as acids in chemistry

not to threaten to resign unless one is prepared to go into the wilderness.

Shortly after 8 a.m. on Sunday, 24 January 1965, the noble heart of Sir Winston Spencer-Churchill beat its last.

how little friendship counted at the top of politics

Parliament must give us more powers Ã¢â'¬â€œ very few would vote against it. We are now being disintegrated [sic] in morale.

Andrew Roberts

Churchill insisted that the Government stayed in Whitehall throughout the Blitz. 'Mr Churchill took the view', recorded Thompson, 'that it was essential that they took at least the same chances as the remainder of the population of London.

so-called leadership is characterized by a pathological reacting to the impressions of the moment and a total lack of any understanding of the command machinery and its possibilities.4 Halder told Lieutenant-General Kurt Dittmar of OKH that Hitler 'was a mystic, who tended to discount, even when he did not disregard, all the

There are two people who sink U-boats in this war, Talbot,' he said. 'You sink them in the Atlantic and I sink them in the House of Commons. The trouble is that you are sinking them at exactly half the rate I am.

Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre,' he wrote in The World Crisis. 'The greater the general, the more he contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter.

set up to study the tactics and equipment required to defeat Japan, even recommended the use of mustard and phosgene gas against underground enemy positions, and was supported in this by Army Chief of Staff George Marshall and Supreme Commander General Douglas MacArthur, but it was vetoed by President Roosevelt.

I have ruined, perhaps, my political career. But that is a little matter; I have retained something which is to me of great value Ã¢â'¬â€œ I can still walk about the world with my head erect.'235 'My dear Duff,' Churchill wrote to him, 'Your speech was one of the finest Parliamentary performances I have ever heard. It was admirable in form, massive in argument and shone with courage and public spirit.'236

By the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill had made about 1,700 speeches and travelled about 82,000 miles – over three times the circumference of the earth – to deliver them. It was an extraordinary display of energy, far more than normal politicians even of the front rank. He had become a vastly experienced and assured public speaker, capable of gauging any audience in an instant.

If he lasts a year, he'll go far.' Talleyrand on Napoleon's consulship