Winston Churchill

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

Judged by every standard which history has applied to Governments, the Soviet Government of Russia is one of the worst tyrannies that has ever existed in the world. It accords no political rights. It rules by terror. It punishes political opinions. It suppresses free speech. It tolerates no newspapers but its own. It persecutes Christianity with a zeal and a cunning never equalled since the times of the Roman Emperors. It is engaged at this moment in trampling down the peoples of Georgia and executing their leaders by hundreds.

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

I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.

The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash.

The English never draw a line without blurring it.

What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What’s left of the man when the work’s done but a shambles of apology.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

Friendships begin with liking or gratitude roots that can be pulled up.

I want someone with the proven strength to persevere, someone who knows this job and takes it seriously, someone who understands that the issues a president faces are not black and white and cannot be boiled down to 140 characters.

Moral of the Work. In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

PATIENCE YOU MUST HAVE my young padawan.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

I’m out there to clean the plate. Once they’ve read what I’ve written on a subject, I want them to think, ‘That’s it!’ I think the highest aspiration people in our trade can have is that once they’ve written a story, nobody will ever try it again.

None of us should be defined by the worst thing we’ve ever done.

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.