Winston Churchill

All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.

There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.

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.

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth… and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth–anonymously and posthumously.

The honest truth is that every day was new, every day was a challenge, every day was starting from a fresh place, and as time went on, over the course of about two years, things became better and better. But I don’t think that there was for me anything like, ‘Ah, this is taking too long’, because ‘long’ didn’t exist. So I see it as a blessing. I have to laugh. I mean there’s no other way to look at it.

Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

Let them look up in the sky then…! if they must be so blind, that cannot see the truth in broad daylight, but must have the whole world in darkness to see the conceit of the stars…

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.