Winston Churchill Quotes

639 Sourced Quotes

I still have the ideas, Walter, but I can't find the words to clothe them.
To Walter Monckton

Winston Churchill
I had been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who got drunk – and I would have liked to have the boozing scholars of the Universities wheeled into line and properly chastised for their squalid misuse of what I must ever regard as a gift of the gods.

Winston Churchill
Bessie Braddock: Winston, you're drunk.
Churchill: Bessie, you're ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober.

Winston Churchill
I did not suffer from any desire to be relieved of my responsibilities. All I wanted was compliance with my wishes after reasonable discussion.

Winston Churchill
There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.

Winston Churchill
Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

Winston Churchill
In defeat unbeatable: in victory unbearable.
Of Lord Montgomery

Winston Churchill
Perfect solutions of our difficulties are not to be looked for in an imperfect world.

Winston Churchill
This Treasury paper, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

Winston Churchill
Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.

Winston Churchill
I do not resent criticism, even when for the sake of emphasis; it parts for the time with reality.

Winston Churchill
To achieve the extirpation of Nazi tyranny there are no lengths of violence to which we will not go.

Winston Churchill
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
On Sir Stafford Cripps

Winston Churchill
Time passes swiftly, but is it not joyous to see how great and growing is the treasure we have gathered together, amid the storms and stresses of so many eventful and to millions tragic and terrible years?

Winston Churchill
And what a plan! This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever occurred.

Winston Churchill
You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.

Winston Churchill
We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

Winston Churchill
A study of Disease-of Pestilences methodically prepared and deliberately launched upon man and beast-is certainly being pursue in the laboratories of more than one great country. Blight to destroy crops, Anthrax to slay horses and cattle, Plague to poison not armies but whole districts - such are the lines along which military science is remorselessly advancing.

Winston Churchill
I now began for the first time to envy those young cubs at the university who had fine scholars to tell them what was what; professors who had devoted their lives to mastering and focusing ideas in every branch of learning; who were eager to distribute the treasures they had gathered before they were overtaken by the night. But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man's Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.

Winston Churchill
When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.

Winston Churchill
It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion's heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar. I also hope that I sometimes suggested to the lion the right place to use his claws.

Winston Churchill
We should lay aside every hindrance and endeavour by uniting the whole force and spirit of our people to raise again a great British nation standing up before all the world; for such a nation, rising in its ancient vigour, can even at this hour save civilization.

Winston Churchill
I submit respectfully to the House as a general principle that our responsibility in this matter is directly proportionate to our power. Where there is great power there is great responsibility, where there is less power there is less responsibility, and where there is no power there can, I think, be no responsibility.

Winston Churchill
That long [Canadian] frontier from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, guarded only by neighborly respect and honorable obligations, is an example to every country and a pattern for the future of the world.

Winston Churchill
Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees... to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilization.
To his son, Randolph Churchill, during a trip to Canada, on 11 August 1929

Winston Churchill
In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

Winston Churchill
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.

Winston Churchill
When the English history of the first quarter of the twentieth century is written, it will be seen that the greater part of our fortunes in peace and in war were shaped by this one man.
Of Lloyd George

Winston Churchill
Here was a place where real things were going on. Here was a scene of vital action. Here was a place where anything might happen. Here was a place where something would certainly happen. Here I might leave my bones.

Winston Churchill
The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

Winston Churchill