Winston Churchill Quotes

British statesman, soldier and writer (1874–1965)

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Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill KG OM CH TD FRS PC (November 30, 1874 – January 24, 1965) was a British statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was a Sandhurst-educated soldier, a Nobel Prize-winning writer and historian, a prolific painter, and one of the longest-serving politicians in British history. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955, though he was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Birth Name: Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

Also Known As: The pug • The Old Lion

Alternative Names: Winston Spencer Churchill • Charles Maurin • David Winter • The Honourable Sir Winston Spencer Churchill • Colonel Warden • Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill • Sir Leonard Spencer • Sir Winston Churchill • Sir Winston Spencer Churchill • Mr Green • The Right Honourable Sir Winston Spencer Churchill • The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill • The Right Honourable Sir Winston Churchill • Churchill • Winston S. Churchill • Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill • Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

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Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without vicory there is no survival.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.

The game of life does not proceed like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes they make five, or minus four, and sometimes the blackboard topples over in the middle of the sum and the pedagogue is left with a black eye.

My conclusion on Freewill and predestination- they are identical.

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.

The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.

Without courage all other virtues lose their meaning.

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.

I never worry about action, but only about inaction.

"If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism."

(Speech in Rome on 20 January, 1927, praising Mussolini)

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

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

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.

The British nation is unique in this respect: they are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.

You'll never find a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.