Quotations from Sir Winston Churchill, 1874-1965
- I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.
The Malakand Field Force [1898]- It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.
The Malakand Field Force [1898]- Terminological inexactitude.
Speech in the House of Commons [February 22, 1906]- Come on now, all you young men, all over the world. You are needed more than ever now to fill the gap of a generation shorn by the war. You have not an hour to lose. You must take your places in life's fighting line. Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Don't be content with things as they are. The earth is yours and the fullness thereof. Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities.
Roving Commission: My Early Life [1930]- Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
While England Slept [1936]- I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf.
While England Slept [1936]- I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Radio broadcast [October 1, 1939]- I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
First Statement as Prime Minister, House of Commons [May 13, 1940]- Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.
First Statement as Prime Minister, House of Commons [May 13, 1940]- We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, 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.
Speech on Dunkirk, House of Commons [June 4, 1940]- If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
Speech in the House of Commons [June 18, 1940]- Let us・race 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: 典his was their finest hour.
Speech in the House of Commons [June 18, 1940]- Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Tribute to the Royal Air Force, House of Commons [August 20, 1940]- This wicked man Hitler, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame.
Radio broadcast [September 11, 1940]- Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valor our only shield. We must be united, we must be undaunted, we must be inflexible.
Report on the war, House of Commons [October 8, 1940]- Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.
Radio broadcast [February 9, 1941]- This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
Remark in the House of Commons following the parachute descent in Scotland of Rudolf Hess [May 13, 1941]- We will have no truce or parley with you [Hitler], or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst -- and we will do our best.
Speech to the London County Council [July 14, 1941]- Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature.
Report on the war, House of Commons [September 30, 1941]- 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.
Address at Harrow School [October 29, 1941]- Do not let us speak of darker days; let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days -- the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.
Address at Harrow School [October 29, 1941]- In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames, and in the future there will be a light which shines over all the land and sea.
Speech on war with Japan, House of Commons [December 8, 1941]- When I warned [the French] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their prime minister and his divided cabinet, "In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken." Some chicken; some neck.
Speech to the Canadian Senate and House of Commons, Ottawa [December 30, 1941]- Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Speech at the Lord Mayor's Day Luncheon, London [November 10, 1942]- "Not in vain" may be the pride of those who survived and the epitaph of those who fell.
Speech in the House of Commons [September 28, 1944]- He [President Franklin D. Roosevelt] died in harness, and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors and airmen who died side by side with ours and carrying out their tasks to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his.
Speech in the House of Commons [April 17, 1945]- From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.
Address at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri [March 5, 1946]- In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.
The Second World War: Moral of the Work, vol. I, The Gathering Storm [1948]- A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Saying- The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Saying- Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.
Saying- This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
Attributed
© All rights reserved