Winston Churchill

The English never draw a line without blurring it.

I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

Moral of the Work. In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, 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.

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling ones pulse and taking ones temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

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.

This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

Real practice has no purpose or direction, so it can include everything that comes.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.

How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.