Winston Churchill

Any 20 year-old who isn’t a liberal doesn’t have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn’t a conservative doesn’t have a brain.

Socialists think profits are a vice; I consider losses the real vice.

It may be that we shall, by a process of sublime irony, have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves.

He is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about.

We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows – it must grow; nothing can prevent it.

We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!

Recognize the ego for what it is: a collective dysfunction, the insanity of the human mind.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists – talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.

To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.

Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.

Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

If a better system is thine, impart it; if not, make use of mine.

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

Valor consists in the power of self recovery.