Quotes By Winston Churchill

Thus ended the great American Civil War, which must upon the whole be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts of which till then there was record.

Be a peg, hammered into the frozen ground, immovable.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.

I'd rather spend half an hour in the company of a top carpenter, than three hours in the company of an average brain surgeon.

He sees with amazement that our defeats are but the stepping stones to victory and that all his victories are stepping stones to ruin. It was apparent to me that this bad man saw quite clearly the shadow of slowly and remorselessly approaching doom, and he railed at fortune for mocking him with the glitter of fleeting success.

My hope is that the generous instincts of unity will not depart from us...[so that we] become the prey of the little folk who exist in every country and who frolic alongside the Juggernaut car of war to see what fun or notoriety they can extract from the proceedings.

There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is far worse or much harder to win.

The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.

We are plunged in a long and grievous struggle. But all will come right if we all work together to the end.

Put together a seaman, soldier and airman and what do you get? The sum of all fears.

We make our buildings and afterwards they make us. They regulate the course of our lives.

My mother always seemed to me like a fairy princess: a radiant being possessed of limitless riches and power.

Fancy living in one of these streets, never seeing anything beautiful, never eating anything savoury, never saying anything clever!

I am not a bit afraid of Siegfried Sassoon. That man can think. I am afraid only of people who cannot think.

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

Unless some effective supranational government can be set up and brought quickly into action, the prospects of peace and human progress are dark and doubtful.

Here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.

Civilisation will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.