Quotations from
Sir Winston Churchill
[1874-1965]

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was a British politician and statesman and orator, a member of Parliament for 40 years, and leader of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, journalist, historian, writer, and an artist. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953, and was the first person to be recognised as an honorary citizen of the United States.

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“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings.
The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”  {Issue #43}
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“In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.”  {Issue #45}
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“Never give up! Never give up! Never give up!”  {Issue #48}
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“One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it.
If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching,
you will reduce the danger by half.”  {Issue #49}
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“You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.”  {Issue #60}
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“Sometimes it's not enough to do your very best. Sometimes you have to get the job done.”  {Issue #66}
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“Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends
that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of
government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
(speech in the House of Commons on 11 November 1947)  {blog 12/2007}
•      •
“When you're going thru hell, keep going.”  {blog 6/2008 & 7/2010}
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“Writing a book is an adventure: It begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress,
then a master, and finally a tyrant.”  {blog 11/2008}
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“Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.”  {blog 5/2009}
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“We contend that 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.”  {blog 1/2010}
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“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity
in every difficulty.”  {blog 6/2010 & 10/2010}
•      •
“We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.”  {blog 6/2010}
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“Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.”  {blog 10/2010}
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“No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form
of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
in a speech in the House of Commons, 11 November 1947  {blog 1/2011}
•      •
“It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider [that] the real vice is making losses.”
{blog 2/2011}
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“Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.”  {blog 6/2011}
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“Saving is a very fine thing. Especially if your parents have done it for you.”  {blog 12/2011}
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“The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.”  {blog 4/2012}
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“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.”  {blog 5/2012}
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“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping [that] it will eat him last.”  {blog 10/2012}
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“Diplomacy is the art of telling plain truths without giving offense.”  {blog 12/2012}
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“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”  {blog 5/2013}
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“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”  {blog 7/2013}
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“The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”  {blog 9/2014}
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“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”  {blog 9/2014}
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“I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.”  {blog 6/2015}
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“Saving is a fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you.”  {blog 12/2015}
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“The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.”  {blog 2/2016}
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“From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put.”  {blog 3/2016}
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“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”  {blog 5/2016}
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“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.”  {blog 6/2016}
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“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”  {blog 8/2016}
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“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”  {blog 4/2017}
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“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”  {blog 8/2017}
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“Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.”  {blog 3/2018}
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“You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”  {blog 7/2018}
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“The arts are essential to any complete national life. The State owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them. Ill fares the race
which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due.” - in 1938  {blog 2/2019}
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“I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.”  {blog 8/2019}
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“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”  {blog 12/2019}

“Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.”  {blog 12/2019}
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“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.”  {blog 7/2022}
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“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; Bring a friend, if you have one.”
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950] to Winston Churchill
response "Cannot possibly attend first night, I will attend the second . . . If there is one.”
~~ Winston Churchill to George Bernard Shaw
{blog 10/2022}
•      •

Churchill Quotations Not Yet Used on the Blog

"People stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing happened."

"All the great empires of the future will be empires of the mind."

"You cannot cure cancer by a majority. What is needed is a remedy."
(House of Commons, 19 June 1930)

"There is no such thing as a good tax."

"Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked,
but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon."

Bessie Braddock: "Sir, you are drunk."
Churchill: "Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober."

Nancy Astor: "Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison."
Churchill: "If I were your husband I would take it."

"You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life."

"If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law."

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else."

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress,
and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled
to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public."

(On Clement Atlee) "A sheep in sheep’s clothing."
(On Clement Atlee) "A modest man, who has much to be modest about."

"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal
of meeting me is another matter."

"The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."

"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."

"Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year.
And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen."

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy."

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

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

"The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that: when nations are strong,
they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong."

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."
“The Sinews of Peace” speech, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 5 March 1945

"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."

"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."

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

"You ask, What is our policy? I will say; It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory — victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival."

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills – we shall never surrender.

"Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour!.”
(House of Commons, 18 June 1930)

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