Winston Churchill Quotes

639 Sourced Quotes

When I make a statement of facts within my knowledge I expect it to be accepted.

Winston Churchill
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
Like other systems in decay, the Roman Empire continued to function for several generations after its vitality was sapped. For nearly a hundred years our Island was one of the scenes of conflict between a dying civilisation and lusty, famishing barbarism.

Winston Churchill
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.

Winston Churchill
We have taken a grave and hazardous decision to sustain the Greeks and try to make a Balkan Front.

Winston Churchill
I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations. I am sorry, however, that he has not been mellowed by the great success that has attended him. The whole world would rejoice to see the Hitler of peace and tolerance, and nothing would adorn his name in world history so much as acts of magnanimity and of mercy and of pity to the forlorn and friendless, to the weak and poor. … Let this great man search his own heart and conscience before he accuses anyone of being a warmonger.

Winston Churchill
Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

Winston Churchill
The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. Therefore our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery in the Air. The Fighters are our salvation... but the Bombers alone provide the means of victory.... In no other way at present visible can we hope to overcome the immense military power of Germany.

Winston Churchill
I have never seen a human being who more perfectly represented the modern conception of a robot.

Winston Churchill
The object of Parliament is to substitute argument for fisticuffs.

Winston Churchill
An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened Attlee got out.

Winston Churchill
The V sign is the symbol of the unconquerable will of the occupied territories, and a portent of the fate awaiting the Nazi tyranny.

Winston Churchill
The people of London with one voice would say to Hitler: 'You have committed every crime under the sun…We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst—and we will do our best.'

Winston Churchill
We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.

Winston Churchill
I owe my advancement entirely to the House of Commons, whose servant I am. In my country, as in yours, public men are proud to be the servants of the state and would be ashamed to be its masters.

Winston Churchill
Side by side … the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue … mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them … gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians — upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must; as conquer we shall.

Winston Churchill
I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities. But the exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described as "The Boneless Wonder." My parents judged that that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralising for my youthful eyes, and I have waited 50 years to see the boneless wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.

Winston Churchill
One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.

Winston Churchill
Make sure that the beer - four pints a week - goes to the troops under fire before any of the parties in the rear get a drop.

Winston Churchill
We are with Europe but not of it. We are linked, not combined. We are interested and associated, not absorbed. And should European statesmen address us in the words that were used of old - Shall I speak for thee to the King or the Captain of the Host? - we should reply with the Shunamite woman: "Nay sir, for we dwell among our own people".

Winston Churchill
I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Book of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since.

Winston Churchill
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 a fateful fatalistic apathy.

Winston Churchill
To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

Winston Churchill
I have in my life concentrated more on self-expression than self-denial.

Winston Churchill
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

Winston Churchill
There is a place for everyone, man and woman, old and young, hale and halt; service in a thousand forms is open. There is no room now for the dilettante, the weakling, for the shirker, or the sluggard. From the highest to the humblest tasks, all are of equal honor; all have their part to play.

Winston Churchill
Not to have an adequate air force in the present state of the world is to compromise the foundations of national freedom and independence.

Winston Churchill
And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time.

Winston Churchill
The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. When great causes are on the move in the world... we learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.

Winston Churchill
To A.P. Herbert about his first speech as a newly elected Member of Parliament:
That wasn't a maiden speech — it was a brazen hussy of a speech — a painted tart of a speech.

Winston Churchill