Quotes By Winston Churchill

I have always thought that it ought to be the main end of English statecraft over a long period of years to cultivate good relations with the United States.

I wish to be Prime Minister and in close and daily communication by telephone with the President of the United States. There is nothing we could not do if we were together.

What an extraordinary people the Americans are! Their hospitality is a revelation to me and they make you feel at home and at ease in a way that I have never before experienced.

This is a very great country my dear Jack. Not pretty or romantic but great and utilitarian. There seems to be no such thing as reverence or tradition. Everything iseminently practical and things are judged from a matter of fact standpoint.

When American military men approach some serious situation they are wont to write at the head of their directive the words "over-all strategic concept". There iswisdom in this, as it leads to clarity of thought....our American military colleagues, after having proclaimed their "over-all strategic concept" and computed availableresources, always proceed to the next step-namely, the method.

It is true that American thought is at least disinterested in matters which seem to relate to territorial acquisitions, but when wolves are about the shepherd mustguard his flock, even if he does not himself care for mutton.

Since 1911 much more than a quarter of a century had passed, and still mortal peril threatened us at the hands of the same nation.....once again we must fight for life and honour against all the might and fury of the valiant, disciplined, and ruthless German race. Once again! So be it.

The world on the verge of its catastrophe was very brilliant. Nations and Empires crowned with princes and potentates rose majestically on every side, lapped in theaccumulated treasures of the long peace. All were fitted and fastened-it seemed securely-into an immense cantilever.

The House will feel profound sorrow at the fate of the great French nation and people to whom we have been joined so long in war and peace, and whom we have regarded as trustees with ourselves for the progress of a liberal culture and tolerant civilization of Europe.

I am going to give you a warning: be on your guard, because I am going to speak, or try to speak, in French, a formidable undertaking and one which will put great demands on your friendship for Great Britain.

The Frogs are getting all they can for nothing, and we are getting nothing for all we can.

Once you are so unfortunate as to be drawn into a war, no price is too great to pay for an early and victorious peace.

All the greatest economists, John Stuart Mill at their head, have always spoken of the evils of borrowing for the purposes of war, and have pointed out that as far as possible posterity should be relieved and the cost of what is consumed in the war be met at the time. That is a counsel of perfection, but nobody has ever come nearer to it than the late Chancellor of the Exchequer [Sir Kingsley Wood].

I had hoped that we were hurling a wild cat on to the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale.

Look at the mistake that Hitler made in not trying invasion in 1940....We had not, at that time, fifty tanks; we had a couple of hundred field guns, some of them brought out of the museums....Think what [the Germans] would do to us if they got here. Think what they would do to us, we who have barred their way to the loot of the whole world, we whom they hate the most because they dread and envy us the most.

We have come to the conclusion that this particular method of warning [church bells] was redundant and not in itself well adapted to the present conditions of war. For myself, I cannot help feeling that anything like a serious invasion would be bound to leak out.

When imagining the horrors of a Hun invasion, there rose that last consoling thought which rises naturally in unconquerable races and in unenslavable men resolved to go down fighting-"you can always take one with you."

Man-power-and when I say that I intend of course woman-power-is at a pitch of intensity at the present time in this country which was never reached before, not even in the last war, and certainly not in this. I believe our man-power is not only fully extended, but applied on the whole to the best advantage. I have a feeling that the community in this Island is running at a very high level, with a good rhythm, and that if we can only keep our momentum-we cannot increase our pace-that very fact will enable us to outclass our enemies and possibly even our friends.

A fearful game of chess proceeds from check to mate by which the unhappy players seem to be inexorably bound...the fact that the British Empire stands invincible, and that Nazidom is still being resisted, will kindle again the spark of hope in the breasts of hundreds of millions of down-trodden or despairing men and women throughout Europe, and far beyond its bounds, and that from these sparks there will presently come a cleansing and devouring flame.

Wickedness, enormous, panoplied, embattled, seemingly triumphant, casts its shadow over Europe and Asia. Laws, customs and traditions are broken up. Justice is cast from her seat. The rights of the weak are trampled down. The grand freedoms of which the President of the United States has spoken so movingly are spurned and chained. The whole stature of man, his genius, his initiative and his nobility, is ground down under systems of mechanical barbarism and of organised and scheduled terror.