Winston Churchill

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

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

When I look back on all the worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

Truth is a naked and open daylight.

Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

Not gold but only men can makeA people great and strong;Men who for truth and honors sakeStand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep,Who dare while others flyThey build a nations pillars deepAnd lift them to the sky.

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

A wise man makes what he learns his own, the other shows he is but a copy or a collection at most.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

Do you know that the tendrils of graft and corruption have become mighty interlacing roots so that even men who would like to be honest are tripped and trapped by them?