- [commenting on the Battle of Britain] Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
- We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.
- [(speech, 30 March 1940)] Although the fate of Poland stares them in the face, there are thoughtless dilettanti or purblind wordlings who sometimes ask us, "What is it that Britain and France are fighting for?" To this I answer, "If we left off fighting you would soon find out!"
- Golf is a game whose aim it is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.
- History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
- I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.
- When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
- Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant.
- Already by 1900 I could boast I had written as many books as Moses.
- We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.
- Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it's the best system we have.
- [on the Soviet Union] It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
- [upon hearing of the love affair between Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend] What a delightful match. A lovely young royal lady married to a gallant young airman, safe from the perils and horrors of war.
- A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
- [on his deathbed] I'm so bored with it all.
- It is impossible to obtain a conviction for sodomy from an English jury. Half of them don't believe that it can physically be done, and the other half are doing it.
- It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
- Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
- Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is--the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.
- The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
- We have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.
- [his view on never finishing a sentence with a preposition] Up with this stupidity I will not put.
- Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.
- Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
- Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.
- How I hated this school, and what a life of anxiety I lived there for more than two years. I made very little progress in my lessons, and none at all at games. I counted the days and the hours to the end of every term, when I should return home from this hateful servitude and range my soldiers in line of battle on the nursery floor. The greatest pleasure I had in those days was reading. When I was nine and a half my father gave me "Treasure Island", and I remember the delight with which I devoured it. My teachers saw me at once backward and precocious, reading books beyond my years and yet at the bottom of the form. They were offended. They had large resources of compulsion at their disposal, but I was stubborn. Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.
- A socialist policy is abhorrent to British ideas on freedom. A socialist state could not afford to suffer opposition--no socialist system can be established without a political police.
- [responding to an accusation that he was conceived out of wedlock] Although present on the occasion, I have no recollection of the events leading up to it.
- Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.
- I like a man who grins when he fights.
- [when told by Nancy Astor {aka Lady Astor) that if she were his wife she would poison his tea] If I were your husband, I would drink it.
- [on bravery] Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
- [on father/mother] Where does a family start? It starts with a young man in love with a girl--no superior alternative has yet to be found.
- If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
- There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.
- [of England, contemplating the significance of the Wright brothers' 1903 success at Kitty Hawk] You came into big things as an accident of naval power when you were an island. The world had confidence in you. You became the workshop of the world. You populated the island beyond its capacity. Through an accident of air power you will probably cease to exist.
- [in his first statement to the House of Commons as Prime Minister, May 13, 1940] I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
- You can always count on Americans to do the right thing--after they've tried everything else.
- [to an aide who advised, "We must kiss America on both cheeks"] Yes, but not on all four.
- I have often had to eat my words and, on the whole, I have found them to be a nourishing diet.
- [in Montreal, 1929] How splendid is our common inheritance. It was a thrill that, after crossing for several days the great wastes of the Atlantic, I landed in a new world, in a new hemisphere, and found myself at home.
- [in Newfoundland, 1941] Meeting [Franklin D. Roosevelt] was like uncorking your first bottle of champagne.
- [observation, 1935] When the situation was manageable, it was neglected. Now that it is thoroughly out of hand, we apply the remedies which then might have effected a cure. Nothing new in this story, until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong--these are the features that constitute the endless repetition of history.
- [13 August 1938] I think we shall have to choose in the next few weeks between war and shame, and I have very little doubt what the decision will be.
- [on his Chiefs of Staff, 1944] They may say I lead them up the garden path, but at every stage of the garden they have found delectable fruit and wholesome vegetables.
- The territories of the future are the territories of the mind.
- [on the destruction of Dresden] It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed . . . I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.
- I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.
- I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes . . . [It] would spread a lively terror.
- If an atomic bomb could be dropped on the Kremlin wiping it out, it would be a very easy problem to handle the balance of Russia, which would be without direction.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content