Winston Churchill Quotes

639 Sourced Quotes

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

Winston Churchill
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.

Winston Churchill
We make this wide encircling movement in the Mediterranean, having for its primary object the recovery of the command of that vital sea, but also having for its object the exposure of the underbelly of the Axis, especially Italy, to heavy attack.

Winston Churchill
We proceeded systematically, village by village and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation.

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

Winston Churchill
If you travel the earth, you will find it is largely divided into two classes of people-people who say 'I wonder why such and such is not done" and people who say "Now who is going to prevent me from doing that thing?"

Winston Churchill
It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

Winston Churchill
[Clement Attlee is] a modest man who has a good deal to be modest about.

Winston Churchill
Remember gentlemen, it's not just France we are fighting for, it's Champagne!
In 1918

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
You cannot ask us to take sides against arithmetic.

Winston Churchill
Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

Winston Churchill
Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.

Winston Churchill
Beware of driving men to desperation. Even a cornered rat is dangerous.

Winston Churchill
There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right.

Winston Churchill
I am most anxious that in dealing with matters which every Member knows are extremely delicate matters, I should not use any phrase or expression which would cause offence to our friends and Allies on the Continent or across the Atlantic Ocean.

Winston Churchill
When I look round to see how we can win the war I see that there is only one sure path... and that is absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland. We must be able to overwhelm them by this means, without which I do not see a way through.

Winston Churchill
"I have not made any arrogant, confident, boasting predictions at all. On the contrary, I have stuck hard to my "blood, toil, tears and sweat," to which I have added muddle and mismanagement, and that, to some extend I must admit, is what you have got out of it."

Winston Churchill
It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

Winston Churchill
No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.

Winston Churchill
I neither want it [brandy] nor need it, but I should think it pretty hazardous to interfere with the ineradicable habit of a lifetime.

Winston Churchill
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy, then an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then it becomes a tyrant and, in the last stage, just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Winston Churchill
Victory was to be bought so dear as to be almost indistinguishable from defeat.

Winston Churchill
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

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

Winston Churchill