Quotees Archive

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.

- Winston Churchill

If we don’t end war, war will end us.

- Winston Churchill

If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

- Winston Churchill

If you are going through hell, keep going.

- Winston Churchill

If you are going to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

- Winston Churchill

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.

- Winston Churchill

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them…let them be your friends.

- Winston Churchill

If you cannot read all your books…fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.

- Winston Churchill

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

- Winston Churchill

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.

- Winston Churchill

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

- Winston Churchill

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you maycome to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

- Winston Churchill

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

- Winston Churchill

In every age there comes a time when a leader must come forward to meet the needs of the hour. Therefore, there is no potential leader who does not have the opportunity to make a positive difference in society.

- Winston Churchill

In Germany they had no kings. They developed them in Britain from leaders who claimed descent from the ancient gods.

- Winston Churchill

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

- Winston Churchill

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

- Winston Churchill

I know why logs spit. I know what it is to be consumed.

- Winston Churchill

I like a man who grins when he fights.

- Winston Churchill

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

- Winston Churchill

I like to live in the past. I don’t think people are going to get much fun in the future.

- Winston Churchill

I love to learn but I do not want to be taught.

- Winston Churchill

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

- Winston Churchill

I never worry about action, but only about inaction.

- Winston Churchill

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

- Winston Churchill

I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.

- Winston Churchill

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.

- Winston Churchill

I saw them before you were born. I came here first in 1900. [Reporter: “Do they look the same?”] Well, the principle seems the same. The water still keeps falling over. 1943, NIAGARA FALLS.

- Winston Churchill

I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations.

- Winston Churchill

I thought of a remark . . . that the United States is like a ‘gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.’ Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

- Winston Churchill

I was myself so smitten in public opinion that it was the almost universal view that my political life was at last ended.

- Winston Churchill

I was only the servant of my country and had I, at any moment, failed to express her unflinching resolve to fight and conquer, I should at once have been rightly cast aside.

- Winston Churchill

I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat.

- Winston Churchill

I’m bored with it all.

- Winston Churchill

I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.

- Winston Churchill

I’ve gotten more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

- Winston Churchill

I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend … if you have one.”— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)”Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one.”— Churchill’s response.

- Winston Churchill

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

- Winston Churchill

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

- Winston Churchill

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

- Winston Churchill

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

- Winston Churchill

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

- Winston Churchill

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

- Winston Churchill

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

- Winston Churchill

I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart, that no Socialist system can be established without a political police…No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.

- Winston Churchill

I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.

- Winston Churchill

I do not suppose that at any moment of history has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. Tonight the sun goes down on more suffering than ever before in the world.

- Winston Churchill

I don’t like mixing up moralities with mathematics.

- Winston Churchill

I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial… I thought I knew a good deal about it all, I was sure I should not fail.

- Winston Churchill

I had a feeling once about Mathematics – that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me – the Byss and Abyss. I saw – as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor’s Show – a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go.

- Winston Churchill