Winston Churchill

Short words are the best and old words when short are best of all.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.

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

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.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor’s wall is ablaze.

If you have inner peace, nobody can force you to be a slave to the outer reality.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.

I don’t think it’s meant for man to know everything at once.

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder’s moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?

It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

What drives me to be who I am, to do all that I do, is not what words will be engraved for my epitaph. What drives me to be who I am, to do what I do, is not vanity, is not for adulation in the eyes of others. What drives me is my own desire to be better; to be happy. When I am dead and buried, the words above will not bring me back to life, I choose to live out my epitaph, and not just for it to be a collection of words someone has chosen to define me.

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.

The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.

Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted. In time, you are made to realize that the kindness done you is become a curse and you wish it had not happened.