Winston Churchill Quotes

639 Sourced Quotes

No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanly directed in the first instance.

Winston Churchill
Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.

Winston Churchill
The Golcondas were considered incomparably the best team in Southern India... [But] we defeated [them] by 9 goals to 3. On succeeding days we made short work of all other opponents, and established the record, never since broken, of winning a first-class tournament within fifty days of landing in India.

Winston Churchill
Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

Winston Churchill
It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.

Winston Churchill
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.

Winston Churchill
In Russia a man is called reactionary if he objects to having his property stolen and his wife and children murdered.

Winston Churchill
Now that we are, as you say, 'in the same boat,' would it not be wise for us to have another conference... and the sooner the better.

Winston Churchill
Science has given to this generation the means of unlimited disaster or of unlimited progress. There will remain the greater task of directing knowledge lastingly towards the purpose of peace and human good.

Winston Churchill
It is wonderful how well men can keep secrets they have not been told.

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
It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and as rapidly as folly.

Winston Churchill
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

Winston Churchill
Governments create nothing and have nothing to give but what they have first taken away — you may put money in the pockets of one set of Englishmen, but it will be money taken from the pockets of another set of Englishmen, and the greater part will be spilled on the way. Every vote given for Protection is a vote to give Governments the right of robbing Peter to pay Paul and charging the public a handsome commission on the job.

Winston Churchill
We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward cross the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.

Winston Churchill
The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is a policy of first importance to a public man.

Winston Churchill
This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.

Winston Churchill
On September 28 the fleet hove in sight, and all came safely to anchor in Pevensey Bay. There was no opposition to the landing. The local "fyrd" had been called out this year four times already to watch the coast, and having, in true English style, come to the conclusion that the danger was past because it had not yet arrived had gone back to their homes.

Winston Churchill
What I want is for you to keep the flies off the meat. It becomes bad if they are allowed to settle even for a moment. I am the meat and you must show me the warning light when troubles arise in the Parliamentary and political scene.
To his newly appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary

Winston Churchill
The world today is ruled by harassed politicians absorbed in getting into office or turning out the other man so that not much room is left for debating the great issues on their merits

Winston Churchill
I have worked very hard with Nehru. I told him he should be the light of Asia, to show all those mil­lions how they can shine out, instead of accept­ing the dark­ness of Com­mu­nism.

Winston Churchill
When I was a young subaltern in the South African War, the water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable we had to put a bit of whiskey in it. By diligent effort I learned to like it.

Winston Churchill
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.

Winston Churchill
It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

Winston Churchill
It is remarkable that Lord Esher should be so much astray...We must conclude that an uncontrollable fondness for fiction forbade him to forsake it for fact. Such constancy is a defect in an historian.

Winston Churchill