Winston Churchill

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

The latest refinements of science are linked with the cruelties of the Stone Age.

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.

No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself.

Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.

All Excess is ill: But Drunkenness is of the worst Sort. It spoils Health, dismounts the Mind, and unmans Men: It reveals Secrets, is Quarrelsome, Lascivious, Impudent, Dangerous and Mad. In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn’t deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people to protect themselves from talented people…

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.