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Adventure
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"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."
-Sir Winston Churchill, from the essay 'Painting as a Pastime', published at the end of Thoughts and Adventures.
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Adversity
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"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour."
-Sir Winston Churchill, Speech delivered to the House of Commons 1940 following the collapse of France. Churchill challenged the British people to uncommon efforts to win the Battle of Britain., June 18, 1940
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America
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You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Animals
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I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Authors & Writing
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Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes 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 to the public.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Commitment
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Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never. Never -- in anything great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Communism
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I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Conflict
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"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
-Sir Winston Churchill, Premier's review of the War
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Conscience
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The only guide to 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.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Decisions
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They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Democracy
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At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man walking into the little booth with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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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.
-Sir Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons, November 11, 1947
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Destruction
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It may be that we shall, by a process of sublime irony, have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.
-Sir Winston Churchill, Address to the House of Commons [regarding the hydrogen bomb], March 1, 1955
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"To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day."
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Dictatorship
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"Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry."
-Sir Winston Churchill, November 11, 1937
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Effort
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"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary."
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Faith
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I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Fame
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Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Fanaticism
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A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Generosity
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We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Gratitude
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Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Greatness & Great Things
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Twice in my lifetime the long arm of destiny has reached across the oceans and involved the entire life and manhood of the United States in a deadly struggle.
There was no use in saying "We don't want it; we won’t have it; our forebears left Europe to avoid these quarrels; we have founded a new world which has no contact with the old. "There was no use in that. The long arm reaches out remorselessly, and every one's existence, environment, and outlook undergo a swift and irresistible change. What is the explanation, Mr. President, of these strange facts, and what are the deep laws to which they respond? I will offer you one explanation - there are others, but one will suffice.
The price of greatness is responsibility. If the people of the United States had continued in a mediocre station, struggling with the wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs, and a factor of no consequence in the movement of the world, they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans: but one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilised world without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes.
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=424
-Sir Winston Churchill, from an address "at Harvard to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree", September 6, 1943
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History
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History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Humor
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"Well, dinner would have been splendid…if the wine had been as cold as the soup, the beef as rare as the service, the brandy as old as the fish, and the maid as willing as the Duchess."
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Leadership
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"I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod."
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Mercy
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We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.
-Sir Winston Churchill, speech in the House of Commons, July 14, 1940
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Politics
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A politician needs 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.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Power
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"The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself."
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Quotations
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"I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, 'Verify your quotations.'"
-Sir Winston Churchill, quoted in Rudolf Flesch, ed., The New Book of Unusual Quotations (NY: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 311
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Socialism
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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."
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Solitude
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"Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong."
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Speeches (oratory)
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Haven't you learned yet that I put something more than whisky into my speeches.
-Sir Winston Churchill, [to his son Randolph]
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Success & Failure
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Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Thought
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"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Truth
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Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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War
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"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."
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Books by and about Sir Winston Churchill
