Winston Churchill Quotes

"These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler's invasion plans. He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city ... Little does he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough fibre of the Londoners. Radio broadcast during the London Blitz, September 11, 1940. Quoted by Martin Gilbert in Churchill: A Life, Macmillan (1992), p. 675 ISBN 0805023968"

"Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. Have You a Hobby?, Answers, 21 April 1934"

"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others."

"When we reflect upon the brutal vices of these salt-water bandits, pirates as shameful as any whom the sea has borne, or recoil from their villainous destruction and cruel deeds, we must also remember the discipline, the fortitude, the comradeship and martial virtues which made them at this period beyond all challenge the most formidable and daring race in the world. On The Vikings, Vol I; The Birth of Britain."

"This was one of the heaviest blows I can recall during the war....It was a bitter moment. Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another. The Fall of Tobruk, 20 June 1942."

"[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." Magna Carta and Man's Quest for Freedom, JW.org"

"The painter is the master of the spectacle. He can change the light, he can move the mountains, he can improve the weather."

"Threatening the Labour Party and trade union movement with a return of the Government-published newspaper he edited during that May's General Strike."

"A free Press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that freemen prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny. You Get It In Black And White, Collier's, 28 December 1935"

"Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be made like this? In a letter to his wife Clemmie, during the build up to World War I."

"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. In the House of Commons, February 28, 1906 speech South African native races"

"The rescue of India from ages of barbarism, tyranny, and internecine war and its slow but ceaseless forward march to civilisation constitute upon the whole the finest achievement of our history. Article for the Daily Mail (16 November 1929), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (1976), p. 356"

"All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope."

"...the war between the Nazis and the Communists; the war of the non-God religions, waged with the weapons of the twentieth century. The most striking fact about the new religions was their similarity. They substituted the devil for God and hatred for love. Speech at the Albert Hall, London (3 December 1936), quoted in The Times (4 December 1936), p. 18"

"We cannot afford to see Nazidom in its present phase of cruelty and intolerance, with all its hatreds and all its gleaming weapons, paramount in Europe at the present time. Speech in the House of Commons (24 October 1935)"

"I had a feeling once about Mathematics, that I saw it all—Depth beyond depth was revealed to me—the Byss and the Abyss. I saw, as one might see the transit of Venus—or even the Lord Mayor's Show, a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly how it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable: and how the one step involved all the others. It was like politics. But it was after dinner and I let it go! Chapter 3 (Examinations), p. 27."

"Might a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings — nay to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke?. Pall Mall Gazette (1924) on HG Wells' suggestion of an atomic bomb, in "BBC Article"

"At this point the march of invention brought a new factor upon the scene. Iron was dug and forged. Men armed with iron entered Britain from the Continent and killed the men of bronze. At this point we can plainly recognise across the vanished millenniums a fellow-being. A biped capable of slaying another with iron is evidently to modern eyes a man and a brother. On the end of the Bronze Age and start of the Iron Age, Vol I; The Birth of Britain."

"The Times is speechless, and takes three columns to express its speechlessness. Speech at Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, Scotland ("The Dundee Election"), May 14, 1908, in Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909), Churchill, BiblioBazaar (Second Edition, 2006), p. 148 ISBN 1426451989"

"No compromise on the main purpose; no peace till victory; no pact with unrepentant wrong -- that is the Declaration of July 4th, 1918. At a joint Anglo-American rally in Westminster, July 4, 1918, speaking against calls for a negotiated truce with Germany. As printed in War aims & peace ideals: selections in prose & verse (1919), edited by Tucker Brooke & Henry Seidel Canby, Yale University Press, p. 138"

"I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Book of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since. Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore)."

"The contrast between the morals at the centre of power and those practiced by wide communities in many subject lands presented problems of ever growing unrest. On the last years of Rome and Roman Britain; Vol I; The Birth of Britain."

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

"A nation that forgets its past has no future."

"My ability to persuade my wife to marry me [was] quite my most brilliant achievement ... Of course, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to have got through what I had to go through in peace and war without the devoted aid of what we call, in England, one's better half. As cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 511, ISBN 1586489577"

"Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime Ministers have never yet been invested. Chapter 2 (Harrow)."

"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. Speech at Zurich University (September 19, 1946) (partial text) ()."

"We must just keep on pegging away."

"I never worry about action, but only about inaction."

"Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater."

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

"I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it. A letter to a friend (1916)"

"The hour has come; kill the Hun. How Churchill said he would end his speech if Germany invaded Britain (John Colville's diary entry for January 25, 1941). In The Churchill War Papers : 1941 (1993), ed. Gilbert, W.W. Norton, pp. 132–133 ISBN 0393019594"