Winston Churchill

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
– Winston Churchill

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.
– Winston Churchill

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity;
an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
– Winston Churchill

All the great things are simple and many can be expressed in a single word: Freedom; justice;
honor; duty; mercy; hope.
– Winston Churchill

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything
else.
– Winston Churchill

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

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry on
as if nothing had happened.
– Winston Churchill

Who dares wins.
– Winston Churchill

My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.
– Winston Churchill

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have
been wrecked.
– Winston Churchill

Nothing is so exhilarating in life as to be shot at with no result.
– Winston Churchill

Danger – if you meet it promptly and without flinching – you will reduce the danger by half.
Never run away from anything. Never!
– Winston Churchill

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar
Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved
upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors
and look for more.
– Winston Churchill

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
– Winston Churchill

Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman.
– Winston Churchill

Charles de Gaulle looks like a female Llama surprised in her bath.
– Winston Churchill

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
– Winston Churchill

The price of greatness is responsibility.
– Winston Churchill

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world
a better place to live in after we are gone?
– Winston Churchill

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy, is the little man walking into the booth,
with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper.
– Winston Churchill

Truth is so precious that she must often be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
– Winston Churchill

Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.
– Winston Churchill

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

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is
another matter.
– Winston Churchill

I am not in favor of the present rate of taxation on earned income. It will destroy all
incentive.
– Winston Churchill

Large views always triumph over small ideas.
– Winston Churchill

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them
are true.
– Winston Churchill

Never trust a man who has not a single redeeming vice.
– Winston Churchill

When they told me that by the year 2100 women would rule the world, my reply was, “Still?”
– Winston Churchill

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

Art is to beauty what honor is to honesty.
– Winston Churchill

Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
– Winston Churchill

The only way a man can remain consistent amid changing circumstances is to change with
them while preserving the same dominating purpose.
– Winston Churchill

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because it is the quality which
guarantees all others.
– Winston Churchill

Your fly-buttons are undone.
No matter. The dead bird does not leave the nest.
– Winston Churchill

All I can say is that I have taken more out of alcohol than it has taken out of me.
– Winston Churchill

How much easier it is to join bad companions than shake them off.
– Winston Churchill

Sometimes it is not enough that we do our best; we must do what is required.
– Winston Churchill

There is no such thing as a good tax.
– Winston Churchill

We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm.
– Winston Churchill

For myself I am an optimist. It does not seem to be much use to be anything else.
– Winston Churchill

Never give in, in nothing, great or small, large or petty, except to convictions of honor and
good sense.
– Winston Churchill

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit
the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous
whack.
– Winston Churchill

Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.
– Winston Churchill

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
– Winston Churchill

Foolish perhaps, but I play for high stakes and given an audience there is no act too daring or
too noble.
– Winston Churchill

There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies and that is fighting without them.
– Winston Churchill

The final tribute is our own conscience.
– Winston Churchill

The Romans had a maxim. “Sharpen your weapons and limit your frontiers.” But our maxim
seems to be “Diminish your weapons and increase your obligations.”
– Winston Churchill

It always looks so easy to solve problems by taking the path of least resistance. What looks
like the easy road turns out to be the hardest and most cruel.
– Winston Churchill

Most people hate the taste of beer – to begin with. It is, however, a prejudice.
– Winston Churchill

There is time and hope if we combine patience with courage.
– Winston Churchill

Idleness is a dangerous breeding ground.
– Winston Churchill

In all battles two things are usually required of the Commander-in-Chief: to make a good
plan for his army and secondly to keep a strong reserve.
– Winston Churchill

It is a crime to despair. We must learn to draw from misfortune the means of future strength.
– Winston Churchill

Smoking cigars is like falling in love. First you are attracted to its shape; you stay with it for
its flavor; and you must always remember never, never, let the flame go out.
– Winston Churchill

How can I tell that my temper would have been as sweet or my companionship as agreeable
if I had abjured from in my youth the goddess Nicotine?
– Winston Churchill

Of two cigars pick the longest and strongest.
– Winston Churchill

Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.
– Winston Churchill

Any clever person can make plans for winning a war if he has no responsibility for carrying
them out.
– Winston Churchill

A young man cannot expect to get very far in life without some good smacks in the eye.
– Winston Churchill

Nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were
finished.
– Winston Churchill

Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual.
– Winston Churchill

I am a Zionist. Let me make that clear. I was one of the original ones after the Balfour
Declaration and I have worked faithfully at it.
– Winston Churchill

My conscience is a good girl. I can come to terms with her.
– Winston Churchill

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
– Winston Churchill

All men are equal and all distinctions between them are unhealthy and undemocratic.
– Winston Churchill

– Winston, you’re drunk!
– Bessie, you’re ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober.
Bessie Braddock, – Winston Churchill

The best method of acquiring flexibility is to have three or four plans for all the probable
contingencies all worked out with the utmost detail.
– Winston Churchill

It is not possibe to draw a hard-and-fast line between individualism and collectivism. You
cannot draw it either in theory or in practice. No man can be a collectivist alone or an
individualist alone. He must be both an individualist and a collectivist. Collectively we light our
streets and supply ourselves with water. But we do not make love collectively and the ladies
do not marry us collectively.
– Winston Churchill

If this is a world of vice and woe, I’ll take the vice and you can have the woe.
– Winston Churchill

Wealth, taste and leisure can bring many things but they do not bring happiness.
– Winston Churchill

Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?
– Winston Churchill

What the horn is to the rhinoceros, what the sting is to the wasp, the Mohammadan faith is
to the Arabs.
– Winston Churchill

If we are together nothing is impossible, and if we are divided all will fail.
– Winston Churchill

Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are
billed to death; those who are worried to death; and those who are bored to death.
– Winston Churchill

I never worry about action, but only about inaction.
– Winston Churchill

Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like but if anyone
says anything back, that is an outrage.
– Winston Churchill

Every pleasure has its corresponding drawback, just as every rose its thorn.
– Winston Churchill

A man should sleep sometime between lunch and dinner in order to be at his best in the
evening when he joins his wife and friends at dinner.
– Winston Churchill

No boy or girl should ever be disheartened by lack of success in their youth but should
diligently and faithfully continue to persevere and make up for lost time.
– Winston Churchill

Facts are better than dreams.
– Winston Churchill

In Russia, a man is called a reactionary if he objects to having his property stolen and his
wife and children murdered.
– Winston Churchill

Do not hesitate to be blunt. This is better done by manner and attitude than by actual
words which can be reported.
– Winston Churchill

Books in all their variety are often the means by which civilization may be carried triumphantly
forward.
– Winston Churchill

The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there is no limit to the
power it can generate.
– Winston Churchill

A good knowledge of history is a quiver full of arrows in debates.
– Winston Churchill

There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the
most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained.
– Winston Churchill

Humanity, not legality, must be our guide.
– Winston Churchill

I cannot subscribe to the idea that it might be possible to dig ourselves in and make no
preparations for anything else than passive defense. It is the theory of the turtle.
– Winston Churchill

Solvency is valueless without security and security is impossible to achieve without
solvency.
– Winston Churchill

If you destroy a free market, you create a black market.
– Winston Churchill

How far, alas, do man’s endeavours fall short in practice of his aspirations!
– Winston Churchill

The Socialists aim at the maximum of regulations and the Conservatives aim at the minimum.
– Winston Churchill

In a broad view, large principles, a good heart, high aims and a firm faith we may find some
charts and compass for our voyage.
– Winston Churchill

– If I were your wife, I’d put poison in your coffee.
– If I were your husband, I’d drink it.
Nancy Astor, – Winston Churchill

When you see a vegetarian dinner you wonder – are they about to it or have they just
finished?
– Winston Churchill

I will have meat; carnivores will win this war.
– Winston Churchill

Where there is a great deal of free speech, there is always a certain amount of foolish speech.
– Winston Churchill

It was my ambition all my life to be master of the spoken word.
– Winston Churchill

Unpunctuality is a vile habit, and all my life I have tried to break myself of it.
– Winston Churchill

Some see private enterprise as a predatory animal to be shot, others look on it as a cow to be
milked but a few see it as a sturdy horse pulling a wagon.
– Winston Churchill

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
– Winston Churchill

I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they want are the fruits of war.
– Winston Churchill

There is no surer method of economizing and saving money than in the reduction of the
number of officials.
– Winston Churchill

A nation that forgets its past has no future.
– Winston Churchill

Although always prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it should be postponed.
– Winston Churchill

I have always considered that the substitution of the internal combustion engine for the
horse marked a very gloomy milestone in the progress of mankind.
– Winston Churchill

It is no use trying to satisfy a tiger by feeding him with cat’s meat.
– Winston Churchill

A nation without conscience is a nation without a soul. A nation without a soul is a nation
that cannot live.
– Winston Churchill

Energy of mind does not depend on energy of body.
– Winston Churchill

Nourish your hopes but do not overlook realities.
– Winston Churchill

When I was younger I made it a rule never to take a strong drink before lunch. It is now my
rule never to do so before breakfast.
– Winston Churchill

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not
fight when your victory will be sure, 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.
– Winston Churchill

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.
– Winston Churchill

France though armed to the teeth is pacifist to the core.
– Winston Churchill

Don’t give your child money. As far as you can afford it, give him horses. No hour is lost that
is spent in the saddle.
– Winston Churchill

Let it not be thought that the age of chivalry belongs to the past.
– Winston Churchill

Reconstructing a cabinet is like solving a kaleidoscopic jigsaw puzzle.
– Winston Churchill

In critical and baffling situations, it is always best to return to first principle and simple
action.
– Winston Churchill

Hate is a bad guide. I have never considered myself at all a good hater – though I recognize
that from moment to moment hate has added stimulus to pugnacity.
– Winston Churchill

The Declaration of Independence is not only an American document. It follows on the Magna
Carta and the Bill of Rights as the third great title-deed in which the liberties of the
English-speaking people are founded.
– Winston Churchill

Ambition, not so much for vulgar ends, but for fame, glints in every mind.
– Winston Churchill

The tail of China is large and will not be wagged.
– Winston Churchill

We cannot escape our dangers by recoiling from them.
– Winston Churchill

National unity does not mean national unanimity.
– Winston Churchill

It is no use leading other nations up the garden and then running away when the dog growls.
– Winston Churchill

There is only one answer to defeat and that is victory.
– Winston Churchill

The only limits to human progress are those made by our own shortcomings. Science is ready
to extend the frontiers of every country without injury to the rights of others and to increase
the well-being of every people at the expense of none.
– Winston Churchill

Socialism is contrary to human nature.
– Winston Churchill

A man’s life must be nailed to the cross of either Thought or Action.
– Winston Churchill

Time is neutral; but it can be made the ally of those who will seize it and use it to the full.
– Winston Churchill

Do not disband your army until you have got your terms.
– Winston Churchill

Criticism is easy; achievement is difficult.
– Winston Churchill

I get into bed, turn out the light, say, “Bugger the lot of them,” and go to sleep.
– Winston Churchill

Material progress, however magnificent, will never accomplish the mission of mankind.
– Winston Churchill

Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.
– Winston Churchill

The essence of American journalism is vulgarity divested of truth.
– Winston Churchill

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.
– Winston Churchill

There are two ways of securing cooperation in human action. You get cooperation by
controls or you can get it by comprehension.
– Winston Churchill

In world affairs, it is no use indulging in hate and revenge. They are the most expensive and
futile and self-destroying luxuries by which one can squander the treasure accumulated by
the valour of your sons and daughters.
– Winston Churchill

Our difficulties and our dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them.
– Winston Churchill

Great quarrels arise from small occasions but seldom from small causes.
– 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

The soul of freedom is deathless; it cannot, and will not, perish.
– Winston Churchill

What we mean is a personal property-owning democracy. Households which have possessions
which they prize and cherish because they are their own, or even a house and garden of
their own, a little money put by for a rainy day, or an insurance policy – that is what the
Conservatives mean by property-owning democracy.
– Winston Churchill

The idea that nothing is true except what we comprehend is silly.
– Winston Churchill

There is a precipice on either side of you – a precipice of caution and a precipice of
over-daring.
– Winston Churchill

I have no patience with people who are always raising difficulties.
– Winston Churchill

Never stand so high upon a principle that you cannot lower it to suit the circumstances.
– Winston Churchill

How many wars have been averted by patience and good will?
– Winston Churchill

I like a man who grins when he fights.
– Winston Churchill

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
– Winston Churchill

Happy are the painters for they shall not be lonely.
– Winston Churchill

It is a curious fact about the British Islanders, who hate drill and have not been invaded for a
nearly thousand years, that as danger comes nearer and grows they become progressively
less nervous; when it is imminent they are fierce, when it is mortal they are fearless.
– Winston Churchill

The vice of capitalism is that it stands for the unequal sharing of blessings; whereas the
virtue of socialism is that it stands for the equal sharing of misery.
– Winston Churchill

Democracy is no harlot to be picked up on the street by a man with a tommy gun.
– Winston Churchill

Dangers which are warded off by effective precaution and foresight are never even
remembered.
– Winston Churchill

You must never make a promise which you do not fulfill.
– Winston Churchill

In sport, in courage, and in the sight of Heaven, all men must meet on equal terms.
– Winston Churchill

The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has
never been peace in the world.
– Winston Churchill

Have some whiskey and soda water. It is a good drink to draw a sword on.
– Winston Churchill

Worry is a spasm of the emotion.
– Winston Churchill

It is impossible to obtain a conviction for sodomy from an English jury. Half of them don’t
believe that it can physically be done, and the other half is doing it.
– Winston Churchill

If you’re going through hell, keep going.
– Winston Churchill

It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it.
– Winston Churchill

Victory will never be found by taking the line of least resistance.
– Winston Churchill

If I stay, for the time being, bearing the burden at my age, it is not because of love for
power or office. I have had an ample share of both. If I stay it is because I have the feeling
that I may, through things that have happened, have an influence on what I care about
above all else – the heralding of a sure and lasting peace.
– Winston Churchill

When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said…
that he had a lot of issues in his life, most of which never happened.
– Winston Churchill

I am going to give a long speech today. I haven’t had time to prepare a short one.
– Winston Churchill

It seems to me the tide of destiny is moving steadily in our favor, though the voyage will be
long and rough.
– Winston Churchill

It’s an extraordinary business this way of bringing babies into the world. I don’t know how
God thought of it.
– Winston Churchill

It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and
rapidly as folly.
– Winston Churchill

My religion prescribed an absolute sacred rite of smoking cigars and drinking alcohol.
– Winston Churchill

Our aristocracy has largely passed from life into history; but our millionaires, the financiers,
the successful pugilists and the film stars who constitute our modern galaxy and enjoy the
same kind of privileges as did the outstanding figures of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries – are all expected to lead model lives.
– Winston Churchill

If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the
future.
– Winston Churchill

The zeal and efficiency of a diplomatic representative is measured by the quality and not by
the quantity of information he supplies.
– Winston Churchill

The stronger your imagination the more variegated your universe.
– Winston Churchill

We shall forgo our luxuries but not our pleasures.
– Winston Churchill

No more force should be used than is necessary to insure compliance with the law.
– Winston Churchill

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

Good cognac is like a woman. Do not assault it. Coddle and warm it in your hands before you
sip it.
– Winston Churchill

Why should war be the only cause large enough to call forth great and free countries?
– Winston Churchill

If the present tries to sit in judgement of the past, it will lose the future.
– Winston Churchill

Surely there was never an army which advanced like the army of science.
– Winston Churchill

Generosity is always wise.
– Winston Churchill

It is no use in saying “We are doing our best.” You have to succeed in doing what is
necessary.
– Winston Churchill

If I could not be conductor of the orchestra, I would like to be the kettle drum.
– Winston Churchill

I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
– Winston Churchill

The only path to safety is to liberate the energies and genius of the nation and let them
have their full fruition.
– Winston Churchill