Winston Churchill

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

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

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.

It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.

Knowledge exists to be imparted.

What I mean is you make the world less ugly just by living in it.

When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven’t developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habit and don’t know how to eliminate them effectively.

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?

All of our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

Your most precious, valued possessions and your greatest powers are invisible and intangible. No one can take them. You, and you alone, can give them. You will receive abundance for your giving.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.

A woman is a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.