Winston Churchill

There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right.

The English never draw a line without blurring it.

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

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called a blessed act of oblivion. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.

Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be super added.

Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Rarely promise, but, if lawful, constantly perform.

All diseases run into one, old age.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.