Winston Churchill

Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Dont be content with things as they are. Dont take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth. She has lived and thrived only by repeated subjugations.

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

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

I was very glad that Mr. Attlee described my speeches in the war as expressing the will not only of Parliament but of the whole nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless and, as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it, and if I found the right words you must remember that I have always earned my living by my pen and by my tongue. It was a nation and race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.

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.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in.

In his private heart no man much respects himself.

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.

Intellectual work is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

You are perfect. An exquisitely fine work of art, labor of love, suspended in silence. Bejeweled, trembling, kissed by a breeze, mesmerized by your beauty. You await in silence, beckoning me to a silken-wrapped slumber.

By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.

We run to win, not just to be in the race.

I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.

I was born upon thy bank, river, my blood flows in thy stream, and thou meanderest forever. At the bottom of my dream.

Every time I think I have reached the peak, I look up and see I still have a ways to go. But I look back and see just how far I have come.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.