Winston Churchill

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

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.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

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.

Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon

Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses.

Friendship is the next Pleasure we may hope for: And where we find it not at home, or have no home to find it in, we may seek it abroad. It is an Union of Spirits, a Marriage of Hearts, and the Bond thereof Vertue.

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?

We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

Self-suggestion makes you master of yourself.

Work is life, you know, and without it, there’s nothing but fear and insecurity.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.

Every man is an impossibility until he is born.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.