Selected Quotes By Winston Churchill
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"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."
Winston Churchill, Government
"Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have."
Winston Churchill, Government
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
Winston Churchill, Work
"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
Winston Churchill, Anger and Fighting
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A joke is a very serious thing."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"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."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"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."
Winston Churchill, Management
"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."
Winston Churchill, Anger and Fighting
"All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope."
Winston Churchill, Life, Freedom
"In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"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."
Winston Churchill, Anger and Fighting
"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."
Winston Churchill, Criticism
"When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."
Winston Churchill, Government
"The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace."
Winston Churchill, Belief
"You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks."
Winston Churchill, Criticism
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."
Winston Churchill, Government
"We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us."
Winston Churchill, Government
"We are all worms, But I do believe that I am a glow worm."
Winston Churchill, Life
"A good speech should be like a woman's skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"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."
Winston Churchill, Freedom
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."
Winston Churchill, Belief
"To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour."
Winston Churchill, Life
"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."
Winston Churchill, Goals
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
Winston Churchill, Anger and Fighting
"If you cannot read all your books...fondle them---peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances."
Winston Churchill, Friendship
"Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."
Winston Churchill, Life
"Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential."
Winston Churchill, Work
"The price of greatness is responsibility."
Winston Churchill, Success
"We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give."
Winston Churchill, Kindness
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use to be anything else."
Winston Churchill, Happiness
"Personally, I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
Winston Churchill, Anger and Fighting
"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."
Winston Churchill, Problems
"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 honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
Winston Churchill, Anger and Fighting
"Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it."
Winston Churchill, Problems
"A lady came up to me one day and said 'Sir! You are drunk', to which I replied 'I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly."
Winston Churchill, Life
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
Winston Churchill, Government
"It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required."
Winston Churchill, Goals
"I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."
Winston Churchill, Life
"Never, never, never give in!"
Winston Churchill, Anger and Fighting
"Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."
Winston Churchill, Success
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
Winston Churchill, Goals
"My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best."
Winston Churchill, Wealth
"If you are going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill, Problems
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
Winston Churchill, Truth
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."
Winston Churchill, Anger and Fighting
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."