Winston Churchill

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.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Goodwill.

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

When I warned them 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!

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

I think there is something, more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren’t enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks, if we agree with him.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

Excellence must be pursued, it must be wooed with all of one’s might and every bit of effort that we have each day there’s a new encounter, each week is a new challenge.