Winston Churchill Quotes

639 Sourced Quotes

I had been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who got drunk – and I would have liked to have the boozing scholars of the Universities wheeled into line and properly chastised for their squalid misuse of what I must ever regard as a gift of the gods.

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
We know enough to be sure that the scientific achievements of the next fifty years will be far greater, more rapid, and more surprising, than those we have already experienced.... Wireless telephones and television, following naturally upon the their present path of development, would enable their owner to connect up to any room similarly equipped and hear and take part in the conversation as well as if he put his head in through the window.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winston Churchill
The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

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
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
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
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
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
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
Perfect solutions of our difficulties are not to be looked for in an imperfect world.

Winston Churchill
To achieve the extirpation of Nazi tyranny there are no lengths of violence to which we will not go.

Winston Churchill
I do not resent criticism, even when for the sake of emphasis; it parts for the time with reality.

Winston Churchill
Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.

Winston Churchill
This Treasury paper, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

Winston Churchill
Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

Winston Churchill
I did not suffer from any desire to be relieved of my responsibilities. All I wanted was compliance with my wishes after reasonable discussion.

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

Winston Churchill
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
On Sir Stafford Cripps

Winston Churchill