Winston Churchill Quotes

639 Sourced Quotes

A curious sport whose object is to put a very small ball into a very small hole with implements ill-designed for the purpose.

Winston Churchill
There is not one single social or economic principle or concept in the philosophy of the Russian Bolshevik which has not been realized, carried into action, and enshrined in immutable laws a million years ago by the white ant.

Winston Churchill
The Dark Ages may return on the gleaming wings of Science.

Winston Churchill
Saving is a very fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you.

Winston Churchill
But now let me return to my theme of the many changes that have taken place since I was last here. There is a jocular saying: 'To improve is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often.' I had to use that once or twice in my long career.

Winston Churchill
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, 'it is the quality which guarantees all others.'

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 shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.
Sometimes misquoted as "We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us."

Winston Churchill
If I had been an Italian, I am sure I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.

Winston Churchill
[Magna Carta provided] a system of checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or a fool.

Winston Churchill
Certainly the prolonged education indispensable to the progress of Society is not natural to mankind. It cuts against the grain. A boy would like to follow his father in pursuit of food or prey. He would like to be doing serviceable things so far as his utmost strength allowed. He would like to be earning wages however small to help to keep up the home. He would like to have some leisure of his own to use or misuse as he pleased. He would ask little more than the right to work or starve. And then perhaps in the evenings a real love of learning would come to those who are worthy – and why try to stuff in those who are not? – and knowledge and thought would open the 'magic casements' of the mind.

Winston Churchill
There are men in the world who derive as stern an exaltation from the proximity of disaster and ruin, as others from success.

Winston Churchill
When the mouse is away the cats might play.
About whether Attlee would go to America about the financial crisis

Winston Churchill
We shall go forward together. The road upwards is stony. There are upon our journey dark and dangerous valleys through which we have to make and fight our way. But it is sure and certain that if we persevere - and we shall persevere - we shall come through these dark and dangerous valleys into a sunlight broader and more genial and more lasting than mankind has ever known.

Winston Churchill
We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.

Winston Churchill
One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'.

Winston Churchill
The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the future of Christian civilization.

Winston Churchill
Do not let us speak of darker days; let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days —the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.

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
We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.

Winston Churchill
By noon it was clear that the Socialists would have a majority. At luncheon my wife said to me, 'It may well be a blessing in disguise.' I replied, 'At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.'

Winston Churchill
The tired parts of the mind can be rested and strengthened not merely by rest, but by using other parts.

Winston Churchill
In my experience of large enterprises, I have found it is often a mistake to try to settle everything at once.

Winston Churchill
The first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not trade; character, not technicalities.

Winston Churchill
When one is in office one has no idea how damnable things can feel to the ordinary rank and file of the public.

Winston Churchill
Our free trade plan is quite simple. We say that every [citizen] shall have the right to buy whatever he wants, wherever he wants, at his own good pleasure, without restriction or discouragement from the state.

Winston Churchill
We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

Winston Churchill
[America] is a very great country, my dear Jack, not pretty or romantic but great and utilitarian.

Winston Churchill
You are a small exclamation mark at the end of a very long and insignificant sentence in the book of history.

Winston Churchill
It is no use dealing with illusions and make-believes. We must look at the facts. The world... is too dangerous for anyone to be able to afford to nurse illusions. We must look at realities.

Winston Churchill