Winston Churchill Quotes

639 Sourced Quotes

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
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