Quotes By Winston Churchill

History is written by the victors.

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.

A communist is like a crocodile: when it opens its mouth you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile or preparing to eat you up.

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.

Of all the branches of men in the forces there is none which shows more devotion and faces grimmer perils than the submariners.

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.

Like other systems in decay, the Roman Empire continued to function for several generations after its vitality was sapped. For nearly a hundred years our Island was one of the scenes of conflict between a dying civilisation and lusty, famishing barbarism.

We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed. And should European statesmen address us in the words which were used of old - "Shall I speak for thee to the King or the Captain of the host?" - we should reply with the Shunamite woman: "Nay, Sir, for we dwell among our own people."

I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.

Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Building slow destroyers ! One might as well breed slow race horses.

The man who stands firm in order to protect a sand-castle can never be relied upon; for he has given away his common sense.

Their insatiable lust for power is only equaled by their incurable impotence in exercising it.

We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official, a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges.

It is alarming ... to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal Palace while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience.

I do not hold that we should rearm in order to fight. I hold that we should rearm in order to parley.

Courage is the greatest virtue because it guarantees all the rest.

How fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave.

Meet success like a gentleman; disaster like a man.