Winston Churchill

No comment is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills;we shall never surrender.

There were gleeful reports in American military publications about the exciting spectacle of a huge flood of water wiping out the rice crops [in North Korea] on which “the Asian” depends for survival. They are very much worth reading, a useful part of historical memory.

So investors don’t go down to the television studio and make sure that the local talk show host or news director is doing what they want. On the other hand, there are other complex mechanisms which make it fairly certain that they will do what the owners and investors want.

I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns… as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny.

The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.

You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.

[on Michelle Obama] She’s something of a force of nature – one of the rare few who are truly present with whomever she’s talking to. Whether it’s a veteran, a child, a working mother, or movie star, she treats everyone the same, with respect and full attention.

Be precise. A lack of precision is dangerous when the margin of error is small.

Stop talking about how you care about people. Show me something. Show me a policy. Show me a policy where you take responsibility.

Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two. We have everything we need except political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-11, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down

The democratic choice Russian people made in the early 90’s is final.

I don’t respond in any way to personal abuse that is thrown at me.

I presume that each of us has the capacity to be a saint or a monster. The rest is up to us, although the circumstances of our lives impose complex conditions on such choices.

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.

Not only were [the British] able to break into China for the first time, but also the profits from opium supported the Raj, the costs of the British Navy, and provided very significant capital which fueled the industrial revolution in England.