Winston Churchill

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

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.

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 truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

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

It may be that we shall, by a process of sublime irony, have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.

The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.

Clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

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.

What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.

He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.

It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.

Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

Recognize the ego for what it is: a collective dysfunction, the insanity of the human mind.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.