Top 1291 Quotes & Sayings by Winston Churchill - Page 5

Your day will go the way the corners of your mouth turn.

Remember the story of the Spanish prisoner. For many years he was confined in a dungeon... One day it occurred to him to push the door of his cell. It was open; and it had never been locked.

When a nation has allowed itself to fall under a tyrannical regime, it cannot be absolved from the faults due to the guilt of that regime.

They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.

There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. The British people can face peril or misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy, but they bitterly resent being deceived or finding that those responsible for their affairs are themselves dwelling in a fool's paradise.

Only changes in mindsets can extend the frontiers of the possible.

If you destroy a free market you create a black market.

Perfectionism spells paralysis.

Our future is in our hands. Our lives are what we choose to make them.

It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do.

You haven't learned life's lesson very well if you haven't noticed that you can give the tone or colour, or decide the reaction you want of people in advance. It's unbelievable simply. If you want them to take an interest in you, take an interest in them first. If you want to make them nervous, become nervous yourself...It's as simple as that. People will treat you as you treat them. It's no secret. Look about you. You can prove it with the next person you meet.

The arts are essen­tial to any com­plete national life. The State owes it to itself to sus­tain and encour­age them. [...] Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the rev­er­ence and delight which are their due.

If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost.

When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened

The American Constitution declares 'All men are born equal.' The British Socialist Party add: 'All men must be kept equal'.

If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.

A small lie needs a bodyguard of bigger lies to protect it.

I propose that 100,000 degenerate Britons should be forcibly sterilized and others put in labour camps to halt the decline of the British race.

Everybody stumbles across a golden opportunity at least once in a lifetime. Unfortunately most people just pick themselves up, dust themselves down, and walk away from it.

I get my exercise being a pallbearer for those of my friends who believed in regular running and calisthenics.

If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything.

Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.

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?

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.

I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.

The cemetery is full of indispensable people.

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.

The man who can master his time can master nearly anything.

Study history, study history. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft.

You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.

May the pain you have known and the conflict you have experienced give you the strength to walk through life facing each new situation with courage and optimism.

Victory will never be found by taking the path of least resistance.

I always like to learn, but I don't always like to be taught.

One cannot leap a chasm in two jumps.

War is horrible, but slavery is worse.

With integrity, nothing else counts. Without integrity, nothing else counts.

If you don't take change by the hand, it will take you by the throat.

I am a man of simple tastes-I am quite easily satisfied with the best of everything.

Money is like manure, its only good if you spread it around.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... 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.'

Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] ... by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks ... to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly.

A gentleman is a man who is only rude when he intends to be.

Give me the facts, and I will twist them the way I want, to suit my argument.

I thought of a remark . . . that the United States is like a 'gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.' Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

Success is often nothing more than moving from one failure to another with undiminished enthusiasm.

After a time, civil servants tend to become no longer servants and no longer civil.

When they told me that by the year 2100 women would rule the world, my reply was 'Still?'

The true guide of life is to do what is right.

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.

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.

I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents.

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.

To be conservative at 20 is heartless and to be a liberal at 60 is plain idiocy.

If you cannot read all your books...fondle them---peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.

Don't argue about the difficulties. The difficulties will argue for themselves.

We have no lasting friends, no lasting enemies, only lasting interests.

Better to dare mighty things and fail than to live in a grey twilight where there is neither victory nor defeat.

Rules were made for fools to follow and wise men to be guided by.

The women's suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers, and husbands.

Don't interrupt me while I'm interrupting.