Winston Churchill

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.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

The latest refinements of science are linked with the cruelties of the Stone Age.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.

The Chinese said of themselves several thousand years ago: China is a sea that salts all the waters that flow into it. Theres another Chinese saying about their country which is much more modernit dates only from the fourth century. This is the saying: The tail of China is large and will not be wagged. I like that one. The British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails. It is due to the working of these important forces that I have the honour to be addressing you at this moment.

Every wall is a door.

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

The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa….Leonardo had eye trouble….Art couldn’t explain it….But now we’re safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf…

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others

If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist.

Men have become the tools of their trade.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It’s very important to be aware of them every time they come up.

Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.

If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.