Winston Churchill

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

Haven’t you learned yet that I put something more than whisky into my speeches.

There is in the act of preparing, the moment you start caring.

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.

Opening amenities are often opening inanities.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

It is a sweet and seemly thing to die for one’s country.

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.

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

No one ever wins a war.

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling ones pulse and taking ones temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.

Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.

When I warned them the French that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken. Some chicken! Some neck!

Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.

I have watched men suffer the anguish of imprisonment, defy appalling human cruelty… break for a moment, then recover inhuman strength to defy their enemies once more.

Thus, then, on the night of the tenth of May, at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State, which henceforth I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having surrendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs.

It’s been a big week for our side. Over on the beaches of Normandy our boys have fired the opening guns of the long awaited drive to liberate the world.

Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

Once war is forced upon us, there is no alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory-not prolonged indecision.