Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can) (1874-11-30 – 1965-01-24) was a British politician. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, and again from 1951 to 1955. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.

On childhood and youth

• She shone for me like the Evening Star. I loved her dearly — but at a distance.
  • On his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 1 (Childhood)

• Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 1 (Childhood)

• Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence, which is a noble thing.
  • On studying English rather than Latin at school, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 2 (Harrow)

• Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime Ministers have never yet been invested.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 2 (Harrow)

• I then had one of the three or four long intimate conversations with him which are all I can boast.
  • On his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 3 (Examinations)

• In retrospect these years form not only the least agreeable, but the only barren and unhappy period of my life. I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I have been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a sombre grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was an unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony. This train of thought must not lead me to exaggerate the character of my school days ... Harrow was a very good school ... Most of the boys were very happy ... I can only record the fact that, no doubt through my own shortcomings, I was an exception. ... I was on the whole considerably discouraged ... All my contemporaries and even younger boys seemed in every way better adapted to the conditions of our little world. They were far better both at the games and at the lessons. It is not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the very beginning of the race.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 3 (Examinations)

• Certainly the prolonged education indispensable to the progress of Society is not natural to mankind. It cuts against the grain. A boy would like to follow his father in pursuit of food or prey. He would like to be doing serviceable things so far as his utmost strength allowed. He would like to be earning wages however small to help to keep up the home. He would like to have some leisure of his own to use or misuse as he pleased. He would ask little more than the right to work or starve. And then perhaps in the evenings a real love of learning would come to those who are worthy – and why try to stuff in those who are not? – and knowledge and thought would open the ‘magic casements’ of the mind.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 3 (Examinations)

• Although always prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it should be postponed.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 4 (Sandhurst), p. 72

• You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 4 (Sandhurst)

• I wonder whether any other generation has seen such astounding revolutions of data and values as those through which we have lived. Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent and vital, has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 5 (The Fourth Hussars)

• I have no doubt that the Romans planned the time-table of their days far better than we do. They rose before the sun at all seasons. Except in wartime we never see the dawn. Sometimes we see sunset. The message of sunset is sadness; the message of dawn is hope. The rest and the spell of sleep in the middle of the day refresh the human frame far more than a long night. We were not made by Nature to work, or even play, from eight o’clock in the morning till midnight. We throw a strain upon our system which is unfair and improvident. For every purpose of business or pleasure, mental or physical, we ought to break our days and our marches into two.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 6 (Cuba)

Early career years

• Every infuence, every motive, that provokes the spirit of murder among men, impels these mountaineers to deeds of treachery and violence. The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inherent in all human beings, has in these valleys been preserved in unexampled strength and vigor. That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword — the tenets and principles of which are instinct with incentives to slaughter and which in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men — stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism. The love of plunder, always a characteristic of hill tribes, is fostered by the spectacle of opulence and luxury which, to their eyes, the cities and plains of the south display. A code of honour not less punctilious than that of old Spain, is supported by vendettas as implacable as those of Corsica.
  • The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter I
  • Description of the tribal areas of what is now Pakistan ; (commonly referred to as Waziristan)
  • Downloadable etext version(s) of this book can be found online at Project Gutenberg

• I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.
  • The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter III

• It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.
  • The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter VIII

• Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
  • The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter X

• How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
  Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
  • The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), Volume II pp. 248-250
  • (This passage does not appear in the 1902 one-volume abridgment, the version posted by Project Gutenberg.)
  • Downloadable etext version(s) of this book can be found online at Project Gutenberg

• It is the habit of the boa constrictor to besmear the body of his victim with a foul slime before he devours it; and there are many people in England, and perhaps elsewhere, who seem to be unable to contemplate military operations for clear political objects, unless they can cajole themselves into the belief that their enemy are utterly and hopelessly vile. To this end the Dervishes, from the Mahdi and the Khalifa downwards, have been loaded with every variety of abuse and charged with all conceivable crimes. This may be very comforting to philanthropic persons at home; but when an army in the field becomes imbued with the idea that the enemy are vermin who cumber the earth, instances of barbarity may easily be the outcome. This unmeasured condemnation is moreover as unjust as it is dangerous and unnecessary.
  • The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), Volume II pp. 394-395
  • (This passage does not appear in the 1902 one-volume abridgment, the version posted by Project Gutenberg.)

• What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man … the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with political rights.
  • On the Boer War, in London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900)

• The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year – and to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.
  • Newspaper interview (1902), when asked what qualities a politician required, in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 489 ISBN 1586486381

• Will the shutting out of foreign goods increase the total amount of wealth in this country? Can foreign nations grow rich at our expense by selling us goods under cost price? Can a people tax themselves into prosperity? Can a man stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle?
  • Speech at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, England (1904) "For Free Trade", as cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), Ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 387 ISBN 1586486381

• Politics are almost as exciting as war, and – quite as dangerous ... [I]n war, you can only be killed once. But in politics many times.
  • From a conversational exchange with Harold Begbie, as cited in Master Workers, Begbie, Methuen & Co. (1906), p. 177

• For my own part I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities which he excites among his opponents. I have always set myself not merely to relish but to deserve thoroughly their censure.
  • November 17, 1906, Institute of Journalists Dinner, London; in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 392 ISBN 1586486381

• The conditions of the Transvaal ordinance under which Chinese Labour is now being carried on do not, in my opinion, constitute a state of slavery. A labour contract into which men enter voluntarily for a limited and for a brief period, under which they are paid wages which they consider adequate, under which they are not bought or sold and from which they can obtain relief on payment of seventeen pounds ten shillings, the cost of their passage, may not be a healthy or proper contract, but it cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.
  • In the House of Commons, February 22, 1906 "King’s Speech (Motion for an Address)", as Under-Secretary of the Colonial Office, repeating what he had said during the 1906 election campaign. This is the original context for terminological inexactitude, used simply literally, whereas later the term took on the sense of a euphemism or circumlocution for a lie. As quoted in Sayings of the Century (1984) by Nigel Rees.

• The Times is speechless, and takes three columns to express its speechlessness.
  • Speech at Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, Scotland ("The Dundee Election"), May 14, 1908, in Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909), Churchill, BiblioBazaar (Second Edition, 2006), p. 148 ISBN 1426451989

• What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.
  • Speech at Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, Scotland ("Unemployment"), October 10, 1908, in Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909), Churchill, Echo Library (2007), p. 87 ISBN 1406845817

• The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed before another year has passed.
  • (Home Secretary) Churchill to Prime Minister Asquith on compulsory sterilization of ‘the feeble-minded and insane’; cited, as follows (excerpted from longer note) : It is worth noting that eugenics was not a fringe movement of obscure scientists but often led and supported, in Britain and America, by some of the most prominent public figures of the day, across the political divide, such as Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, John Maynard Keynes and Theodore Roosevelt. Indeed, none other than Winston Churchill, whilst Home Secretary in 1910, made the following observation: [text of quote] (quoted in Jones, 1994: 9)., in ‘Race’, sport, and British society (2001), Carrington & McDonald, Routledge, Introduction, Note 4, p. 20 ISBN 0415246296

• Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be made like this?
  • In a letter to his wife Clemmie, during the build up to World War I.

• Like chasing a quinine pill around a cow pasture.
  • On playing golf : as cited in The quote verifier: who said what, where, and when (2006), Keyes, Macmillan, p. 27 ISBN 0312340044

• I am finished.
  • On losing his position at the Admiralty in 1915. Said to Lord Riddell, as cited in Maxims and Reflections , Chapter I (On Himself), Churchill, Houghton Mifflin Company (1947)

• [The] truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, May 17, 1916 "Royal Assent".

• I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it.
  • A letter to a friend (1916)

• The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. ... Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.
  • From The World Crisis, 1911-1918 : Chapter I (The Vials of Wrath), Churchill, Butterworth (1923)

• I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gases: gases can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected... We cannot, in any circumstances acquiesce to the non-utilisation of any weapons which are available to procure a speedy termination of the disorder which prevails on the frontier.
  • Statement as president of the Air Council, War Office Departmental Minute (1919-05-12); Churchill Papers 16/16, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.

  Many argue that quotes from this passage are often taken out of context, because Churchill is distinguishing between non-lethal agents and the deadly gasses used in World War I and emphasizing the use of non-lethal weapons; however Churchill is not clearly ruling out the use of lethal gases, simply stating that "it is not necessary to use only the most deadly". It is sometimes claimed that gas killed many young and elderly Kurds and Arabs when the RAF bombed rebelling villages in Iraq in 1920 during the British occupation. For more information on this matter, see Gas in Mesopotamia.

• Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy.
  • On Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, in the House of Commons, November 5, 1919 as cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), Ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 355 ISBN 1586486381

• First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in England would say, 'I am an English man practising the Jewish faith.' This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree. We in Great Britain well know that during the great struggle the influence of what may be called the 'National Jews' in many lands was cast preponderatingly on the side of the Allies; and in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others winning the Victoria Cross for valour.
  • "Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (February 1920)

  (A note: This article appears frequently on internet hate-sites. It must be kept in mind that some believe that the purpose and context of Churchill's article were quite different from that implied by some of those who are today openly hostile to the Jewish people. The 1920 article was intended by Churchill, and seen at the time by his many Jewish friends, as an antidote to the blood libel anti-Semitic tract, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," then enjoying wide circulation in Europe and the United States, in large part financed by the American automobile mogul, Henry Ford.)

• However we may dwell upon the difficulties of General Dyer during the Amritsar riots, upon the anxious and critical situation in the Punjab, upon the danger to Europeans throughout that province, ... one tremendous fact stands out – I mean the slaughter of nearly 400 persons and the wounding of probably three to four times as many, at the Jallian Wallah Bagh on 13th April. That is an episode which appears to me to be without precedent or paralell in the modern history of the British Empire. ... It is an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, July 8, 1920 "Amritsar" ; at the time, Churchill was serving as Secretary of State for War under Prime Minister David Lloyd George

• I yield to no one in my detestation of Bolshevism, and of the revolutionary violence which precedes it. ... But my hatred of Bolshevism and Bolsheviks is not founded on their silly system of economics, or their absurd doctrine of an impossible equality. It arises from the bloody and devastating terrorism which they practice in every land into which they have broken, and by which alone their criminal regime can be maintained. ... Goverments who have seized upon power by violence and by usurpation have often resorted to terrorism in their desperate efforts to keep what they have stolen, but the august and venerable structure of the British Empire ... does not need such aid. Such ideas are absolutely foreign to the British way of doing things.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, July 8, 1920 "Amritsar"

• Let me marshall the facts. The crowd was unarmed, except with bludgeons. It was not attacking anybody or anything. It was holding a seditious meeting. When fire had been opened upon it to disperse it, it tried to run away. Pinned up in a narrow place considerably smaller than Trafalgar Square, with hardly any exits, and packed together so that one bullet would drive through three or four bodies, the people ran madly this way and the other. When the fire was directed upon the centre, they ran to the sides. The fire was then directed to the sides. Many threw themselves down on the ground, and the fire was then directed on the ground. This was continued for 8 or 10 minutes ... [i]f the road had not been so narrow, the machine guns and the armoured cars would have joined in. Finally, when the ammunition had reached the point that only enough remained to allow for the safe return of the troops, and after 379 persons ... had been killed, and when most certainly 1,200 or more had been wounded, the troops, at whom not even a stone had been thrown, swung round and marched away. ... We have to make it absolutely clear ... that this is not the British way of doing business. ... Our reign, in India or anywhere else, has never stood on the basis of physical force alone, and it would be fatal to the British Empire if we were to try to base ourselves only upon it.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, July 8, 1920 "Amritsar"

• I cannot pretend to feel impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.
  • In "Painting as a Pastime", first published in the Strand Magazine in two parts (December 1921/January 1922), cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 456 ISBN 1586486381

• Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and the glory of the climb.
  • In "Painting as a Pastime", the Strand Magazine (December 1921/January 1922), cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 568 ISBN 1586486381

• The choice was clearly open: crush them with vain and unstinted force, or try to give them what they want. These were the only alternatives, and though each had ardent advocates, most people were unprepared for either. Here indeed was the Irish spectre – horrid and inexorcisable.
  • The World Crisis, Volume V : the Aftermath (1929), Churchill, Butterworth (London)

• No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.
  • As cited in Winston Churchill: personal accounts of the great leader at war (2005), Paterson, David & Charles, p. 73 ISBN 0715319647

• Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.
  • Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches (1974), Chelsea House, Volume IV: 1922-1928, p. 3462 ISBN 0835206939

• I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, July 7, 1926 "Emergency Services", responding to criticism that he edited the British Gazette in a biased manner during the General Strike, as cited in The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), ed. Shapiro & Epstein, Yale University Press, p. 152 ISBN 0300107986

• Make your minds perfectly clear that if ever you let loose upon us again a general strike, we will loose upon you – another "British Gazette."
  • Speech in the House of Commons, July 7, 1926 "Emergency Services" ; at this time, Churchill was serving as Chancellor of the Excheqer under Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.
  • Threatening the Labour Party and trade union movement with a return of the Government-published newspaper he edited during that May's General Strike.

• If I had been an Italian, I am sure I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.
  • To Benito Mussolini in a press conference in Rome (January 1927), as quoted in Churchill : A Life (1992) by Martin Gilbert

• A sheep in sheep's clothing.
  • On Ramsay MacDonald. This is often taken as referring to Clement Attlee, but Scottish historian D. W. Brogan is cited in Safire’s Political Dictionary (2008), William Safire, Oxford University Press US, p. 352 ISBN 0195343344 as follows: ‘Sir Winston Churchill never said of Clement Attlee that he was a sheep in sheep’s clothing. I have this on the excellent authority of Sir Winston himself. The phrase was totally inapplicable to Mr. Attlee. It was applicable, and applied, to J. Ramsay MacDonald, a very different kind of Labour leader.’

• I do think unpunctuality is a vile habit, and all my life I have tried to break myself of it.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 7 (Hounslow)

• I now began for the first time to envy those young cubs at the university who had fine scholars to tell them what was what; professors who had devoted their lives to mastering and focusing ideas in every branch of learning; who were eager to distribute the treasures they had gathered before they were overtaken by the night. But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man’s Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore)

• I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Book of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore)

• It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore)

• I had been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who got drunk – and I would have liked to have the boozing scholars of the Universities wheeled into line and properly chastised for their squalid misuse of what I must ever regard as a gift of the gods.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 10 (The Malakand Field Force)

• Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent, or arrogant Commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations — all take their seats at the Council Board on the morrow of a declaration of war. Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.
  • My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 18 (With Buller To The Cape), p. 246
  • Quoted in This Time It's Our War (2003) by Leonard Fein in The Forward (July 25, 2003)

• I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities. but the exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described as "The Boneless Wonder." My parents judged that that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralising for my youthful eyes, and I have waited 50 years to see the boneless wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.
  • A jibe at Prime Minister ( and First Lord of the Treasury ) Ramsay MacDonald during a speech in the House of Commons, January 28, 1931 "Trade Disputes and Trade Unions (Amendment) Bill".

• India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator.
  • Speech at Royal Albert Hall, London (18 March 1931)

• It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer of the type well-known in the East, now posing as a fakir, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.
  • Comment on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, addressing the Council of the West Essex Unionist Association (23 February 1931); as quoted in "Mr Churchill on India" in The Times (24 February 1931)

• We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest number of words into the into the smallest amount of thought.
  • A jibe directed at Ramsay MacDonald, during a speech in the House of Commons, March 23, 1933 "European Situation". This quote is similar to a remark (“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met”) made by Abraham Lincoln. [Frederick Trevor Hill credits Lincoln with this remark in Lincoln the Lawyer (1906), adding that ‘History has considerately sheltered the identity of the victim’.]

• One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.
  • "Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935)

• We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilisation will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the Great Germanic nation.
  • "Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935)

• Mr. Gandhi has gone very high in my esteem since he stood up for the untouchables… I do not care whether you are more or less loyal to Great Britain… Tell Mr. Gandhi to use the powers that are offered and make the thing a success.
  • Letter to G.D. Birla (1935) ; published in Winston S. Churchill, Volume Five : The Coming of War 1922-1939 (1979) by Sir Martin Gilbert

• The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is some one outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; some one strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action.
  • At an unveiling of a memorial to T. E. Lawrence at the Oxford High School for Boys (1936-10-03); as quoted in Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T.E. Lawrence (1989) by Jeremy M Wilson

• Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
  • On Stanley Baldwin, as cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), Ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 322 ISBN 1586486381

• Anyone can see what the position is. The Government simply cannot make up their mind, or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent. So we go on preparing more months and years – precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britian – for the locusts to eat.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, November 12, 1936 "Debate on the Address", criticizing the Government of Stanley Baldwin for its conciliatory stance toward Hitler.

• The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, November 12, 1936 "Debate on the Address"
  • Cited in Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth
  • This speech is also commonly known by the name "The Locust Years".

• Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, 'it is the quality which guarantees all others.'
  • In Great Contemporaries, "Alfonso XIII" (1937)

• The essence and foundation of House of Commons debating is formal conversation. The set speech, the harangue addressed to constituents, or to the wider public out of doors, has never succeeded much in our small wisely-built chamber. To do any good you have got to get down to grips with the subject and in human touch with the audience.
  • In Great Contemporaries, "Clemenceau" (1937)

• I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.
  • To the Palestine Royal Commission (1937)

• Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
  • "Armistice - or Peace?" Evening Standard, November 11, 1937

• For five years I have talked to the House on these matters – not with very great success. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet. [ ... ] Look back upon the last five years – since, that is to say, Germany began to rearm in earnest and openly to seek revenge ... historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory – gone with the wind! Now the victors are the vanquished, and those who threw down their arms in the field and sued for an armistice are striding on to world mastery. That is the position – that is the terrible transformation that has taken place bit by bit.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, March 24, 1938 "Foreign Affairs and Rearmament", 12 days after the Anschluss (the Nazi annexation of Austria).

• [O]ur loyal, brave people ... should know the truth. ... they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, ... and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies; ‘Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.’ And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proferred to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, October 5, 1938 "Policy of His Majesty’s Government", a week after the announcement of the Munich Accords.

• I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations. I am sorry, however, that he has not been mellowed by the great success that has attended him. The whole world would rejoice to see the Hitler of peace and tolerance, and nothing would adorn his name in world history so much as acts of magnanimity and of mercy and of pity to the forlorn and friendless, to the weak and poor. ... Let this great man search his own heart and conscience before he accuses anyone of being a warmonger.
  • "Mr. Churchill's Reply" in The Times (1938-11-07)

• Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonour. They chose dishonour. They will have war.
  • To Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons, after the Munich accords (1938)

The World War II years

• 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.
  • BBC broadcast, London, October 1, 1939 (partial text).

• I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.' We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, after taking office as Prime Minister (13 May 1940) This has often been misquoted in the form: "I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat and tears..."
  • The Official Report, House of Commons (5th Series), 13 May 1940, vol. 360, c. 1502. Audio records of the speech do spare out the "It is" before the in the beginning of the "Victory"-Part
• Side by side ... the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue ... mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them ... gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians -- upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must; as conquer we shall.
  • Radio broadcast, Be Ye Men of Valour , May 19, 1940 (partial text)

• Every morn brought forth a noble chance, and every chance brought forth a noble knight.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, June 4, 1940; passage praising the airmen of the Royal Air Force and their efforts during the evacuation of Dunkirk. This is a close paraphrase of Tennyson:
    • When every morning brought a noble chance,
      And every chance brought out a noble knight.
    • Alfred Tennyson, "Morte d'Arthur", stanza 23 (1842), and the expanded "The Passing of Arthur", stanza 36 in Idylls of the King (1856–1885)

• 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 and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (4 June 1940); It has been noted that the most famous passage, beginning "We shall fight on the beaches..." and ending "...we shall never surrender," consists entirely of words derived from Old English (Anglo-Saxon), except for the word "surrender" — which is derived from Old French.

• Bearing ourselves humbly before God ... we await undismayed the impending assault ... be the ordeal sharp or long, or both, we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parlay; we may show mercy – we shall ask for none.
  • BBC Broadcast, London, July 14, 1940 "War of the Unknown Warriors".

• Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us now. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'
  • Speech in the House of Commons, June 18, 1940 "War Situation".

• The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day; but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, also known as "The Few", famous as the origin of the popular phrase "never was so much owed by so many to so few", complimenting the pilots in the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain (1940-08-20)

• We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.
  • Radio broadcast, London, Dieu Protège La France [God protect France], October 21, 1940 (partial text)

• Goodnight then: sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly upon all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn. Vive la France! Long live also the forward march of the common people in all the lands towards their just and true inheritance, and towards the broader and fuller age.
  • Radio broadcast, London, Dieu Protège La France [God protect France], October 21, 1940 (partial text)

• These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler’s invasion plans. He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city ... Little does he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough fibre of the Londoners.
  • Radio broadcast during the London Blitz, September 11, 1940. Quoted by Martin Gilbert in Churchill: A Life, Macmillan (1992), p. 675 ISBN 0805023968

• The hour has come; kill the Hun.
  • How Churchill said he would end his speech if Germany invaded Britain (John Colville's diary entry for January 25, 1941). In The Churchill War Papers : 1941 (1993), ed. Gilbert, W.W. Norton, pp. 132-133 ISBN 0393019594

• Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt: Put your confidence in us. ... We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.
  • BBC radio broadcast, February 9, 1941. In The Churchill War Papers : 1941 (1993), ed. Gilbert, W.W. Norton, pp. 199-200 ISBN 0393019594

• I must point out ... that the British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst, and like to be told that they are very likely to get much worse in the future and must prepare themselves for further reverses.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, June 10, 1941 "Defence of Crete", in The Churchill War Papers : 1941 (1993), Churchill/Gilbert, Norton, p. 785 ISBN 0393019594.

• If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.
  • To his personal secretary John Colville the evening before Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. As quoted by Andrew Nagorski in The Greatest Battle (2007), Simon & Schuster, pp. 150-151 ISBN 0743281101

• Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorised into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine - which we and the rest of the civilised world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing - cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces. ... So now this bloodthirsty guttersnipe must launch his mechanized armies upon new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation.
  • Radio broadcast on the German invasion of Russia, June 22, 1941. In The Churchill War Papers : 1941 (1993), W.W. Norton, pp. 835-836 ISBN 0393019594

• We ask no favours of the enemy. We seek from them no compunction. On the contrary, if tonight the people of London were asked to cast their votes as to whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of all cities, an overwhelming majority would cry, "No, we will mete out to the Germans the measure, and more than the measure, they have meted out to us." {applause} The people of London with one voice would say to Hitler: "You have committed every crime under the sun. Where you have been the least resisted there you have been the most brutal. It was you who began the indiscriminate bombing. We remember Warsaw! In the first few days of the war. We remember Rotterdam. We have been newly reminded of your habits by the hideous massacre in Belgrade. We know too well the bestial assaults you're making upon the Russian people, to whom our hearts go out in their valiant struggle! {cheers} We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will! You do your worst! - and we will do our best! {sustained cheering} Perhaps it may be our turn soon. Perhaps it may be our turn now."
  • July 14, 1941, in a speech before the London County Council. The original can be found in Churchill's The Unrelenting Struggle (English edition 187; American edition 182) or in the Complete Speeches VI:6448.

• Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
  • Speech given at Harrow School, Harrow, England, October 29, 1941. Quoted in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, 2008, p. 23 ISBN 1586486381

• We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.
  • Speech before Joint Session of the Canadian Parliament, Ottawa (December 30, 1941)
  • The Yale Book of Quotations, ed. Shapiro & Epstein, Yale University Press (2006), p. 153 ISBN 0300107986

• When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, "In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken." Some chicken! Some neck!
  • Reference to the French government; speech before Joint Session of the Canadian Parliament, Ottawa (December 30, 1941)
  • The Yale Book of Quotations, ed. Shapiro & Epstein, Yale University Press (2006), p. 153 ISBN 0300107986

• The most dangerous moment of the War, and the one which caused me the greatest alarm, was when the Japanese Fleet was heading for Ceylon and the naval base there. The capture of Ceylon, the consequent control of the Indian Ocean, and the possibility at the same time of a German conquest of Egypt would have closed the ring and the future would have been black.
  • Quote about the (April 5, 1942) Easter Sunday Raid on Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka). From a conversation at the British Embassy, Washington D.C., as described by Leonard Birchall, RCAF, in Battle for the Skies (2004), Michael Paterson, David & Charles, ISBN 0715318152

• It was an experience of great interest to me to meet Premier Stalin ... It is very fortunate for Russia in her agony to have this great rugged war chief at her head. He is a man of massive outstanding personality, suited to the sombre and stormy times in which his life has been cast; a man of inexhaustible courage and will-power and a man direct and even blunt in speech, which, having been brought up in the House of Commons, I do not mind at all, especially when I have something to say of my own. Above all, he is a man with that saving sense of humour which is of high importance to all men and all nations, but particularly to great men and great nations. Stalin also left upon me the impression of a deep, cool wisdom and a complete absence of illusions of any kind. I believe I made him feel that we were good and faithful comrades in this war – but that, after all, is a matter which deeds not words will prove.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, September 8, 1942 "War Situation".

• I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.
  • In conversation to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India. This quotation is widely cited as written in "a letter to Leo Amery" (e.g., in "Jolly Good Fellows and Their Nasty Ways" by Vinay Lal in Times of India (15 January 2007)) but it is actually attributed to Churchill as a remark, in an entry for September 1942 in Leo Amery : Diaries (1988), edited John Barnes and David Nicholson, p. 832:

During my talk with Winston he burst out with: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

• Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
  • speech at Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, Mansion House, London, November 10, 1942 : (partial text)
  • Referring to the British victory over the German Afrika Korps at the Second Battle of El Alamein in Egypt

• I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.
  • speech at Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, Mansion House, London, November 10, 1942
  • The Yale Book of Quotations, ed. Shapiro & Epstein, Yale University Press (2006), p. 153 ISBN 0300107986

• Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein, we never had a defeat.
  • The Second World War, Volume IV : The Hinge of Fate (1951) Chapter 33 (The Battle of Alamein)
  • BBC News story on the 60th anniversary of Alamein

• The maxim ‘Nothing avails but perfection’ may be spelt shorter: ‘Paralysis.’
  • Minute [brief note] to General Ismay, December 6, 1942 , on proposed improvements to landing-craft
  • In The Second World War, Volume IV: The Hinge of Fate (1951), Appendix C

• I am sure it would be sensible to restrict as much as possible the work of these gentlemen, who are capable of doing an immense amount of harm with what may very easily degenerate into charlatanry. The tightest hand should be kept over them, and they should not be allowed to quarter themselves in large numbers among Fighting Services at the public expense.
  • On psychiatrists, in a letter to John Anderson, Lord President of the Council (December 19, 1942)
  • In The Second World War, Volume IV: The Hinge of Fate (1951), Appendix C

• There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.
  • Radio broadcast (March 21, 1943), cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 21 ISBN 1586486381

• By its sudden collapse, ... the proud German army has once again proved the truth of the saying, 'The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet'.
  • Speech before a Joint Session of Congress (May 19, 1943), Washington, D. C., in Never Give In! : The best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches (2003), Hyperion, p. 352 ISBN 1401300561

• The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
  • Speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943, in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999), Knowles & Partington, Oxford University Press, p. 215 ISBN 0198601735

• I have nothing to add to the reply which has already been sent.
  • Response to Dundee Council after refusing to expand on his reasons for not accepting the Freedom of the City Memo (October 27, 1943)

• I hate nobody except Hitler — and that is professional.
  • Churchill to John Colville during WWII, quoted by Colville in his book The Churchillians (1981) ISBN 0297779095

• We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.
  • Speech to the House of Commons (October 28, 1943), on plans for the rebuilding of the Chamber (destroyed by an enemy bomb May 10, 1941), in Never Give In! : The best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches (2003), Hyperion, p. 358 ISBN 1401300561

• The essence of good House of Commons speaking is the conversational style, the facility for quick, informal interruptions and interchanges. Harangues from a rostrum would be a bad substitute for the conversational style in which so much of our business is done. But the conversational style requires a fairly small space, and there should be on great occasions a sense of crowd and urgency. There should be a sense of the importance of much that is said and a sense that great matters are being decided, there and then, by the House. ... It has a collective personality which enjoys the regard of the public, and which imposes itself upon the conduct not only of individual Members but of parties.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, October 28, 1943 "House of Commons Rebuilding".

• The House of Commons has lifted our affairs above the mechanical sphere into the human sphere. It thrives on criticism, it is perfectly impervious to newspaper abuse or taunts from any quarter, and it is capable of digesting almost anything or almost any body of gentlemen, whatever be the views with which they arrive. There is no situation to which it cannot address itself with vigour and ingenuity. It is the citadel of British liberty; it is the foundation of our laws; its traditions and its privileges are as lively today it broke the arbitrary power of the Crown and substituted that Constitutional Monarchy under which we have enjoyed so many blessings.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, October 28, 1943 "House of Commons Rebuilding".

• You might however consider whether you should not unfold as a background the great privilege of habeas corpus and trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the English people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the Executive to cast a man in prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist.
  • In a telegram (November 21, 1942) by Churchill from Cairo, Egypt to Home Secretary Herbert Morrison; cited in In the Highest Degree Odious (1992), Simpson, Clarendon Press, p. 391 ISBN 0198257759

• The object of presenting medals, stars, and ribbons is to give pride and pleasure to those who have deserved them. At the same time a distinction is something which everybody does not possess. If all have it it is of less value ... A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, March 22, 1944 "War Decorations".

• I have left the obvious, essential fact to this point, namely, that it is the Russian Armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the German army. In the air and on the oceans we could maintain our place, but there was no force in the world which could have been called into being, except after several more years, that would have been able to maul and break the German army unless it had been subjected to the terrible slaughter and manhandling that has fallen to it through the strength of the Russian Soviet Armies.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, August 2, 1944 "War Situation".

• A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward ... Let us have no fear of the future.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, November 29, 1944 "Debate on the Address".

• 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.
  • After the devastation of Dresden by aerial bombing, and the resulting fire storm (February 1945). Quoted in Where the Right Went Wrong (2004) by Patrick J Buchanan, p. 119 ISBN 0312341156

• It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, February 27, 1945 "Crimea Conference"; in The Second World War, Volume VI: Triumph and Tragedy (1954), Chapter XXIII – Yalta: Finale.

Post-war years

• The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, October 22, 1945 "Demobilisation"

• Meeting Roosevelt was like uncorking your first bottle of champagne.
  • Winston Churchill's visit to FDR's grave site at Hyde Park, NY. Reflecting on his past and the relationship he had with FDR. From the PBS series, American Experience [The Presidents: FDR]

• The very first thing the President did was to show me the new Presidential Seal, which he had just redesigned. He explained, 'The seal has to go everywhere the President goes. It must be displayed upon the lectern when he speaks. The eagle used to face the arrows but I have re-designed it so that it now faces the olive branches… what do you think?' I said, 'Mr. President, with the greatest respect, I would prefer the American eagle's neck to be on a swivel so that it could face the olive branches or the arrows, as the occasion might demand.'
  • An exchange (March 4, 1946) with Harry S. Truman aboard the Presidential train in Washington, D.C.'s Union Station before journeying to Fulton, Missouri; as quoted in "The Genius and Wit of Winston Churchill" by Robin Lawson

• When I was a young subaltern in the South African War, the water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable we had to put a bit of whiskey in it. By diligent effort I learned to like it.
  • Aboard the Presidential train during the journey to Fulton, Missouri (March 4, 1946); quoted in Conflict and Crisis by Robert Donovan, University of Missouri Press (1996), p. 190 ISBN 082621066X

• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.
  • On Soviet communism and the Cold War, in a speech at Fulton, Missouri on March 5, 1946 ; (complete text)

• There is less there than meets the eye.
  • On Prime Minister Clement Attlee, to President Truman, in 1946. When Truman defended Attlee (‘He seems a modest sort of fellow’), Churchill replied ‘He’s got a lot to be modest about.’ As cited in The Origins of the Cold War in Europe (1994), Reynolds, Yale University Press, p. 93 ISBN 0300105622

• I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is that, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.
  • When Churchill was in opposition after 1945, he led the Conservative Party in a debate about the Health Service. As he listened to Aneurin Bevan’s opening speech, he called for some statistics about infant mortality ... [which were] supplied, copiously and accurately, by Iain Macleod, then working in the back rooms of the Conservative Research Department. But, in his speech, Churchill made only one bold and sweeping use ... [of Macleod’s detailed research]. Encountering MacLeod afterward, Churchill made the above statement. As cited in The Life of Politics (1968), Henry Fairlie, Methuen, pp. 203-204

• When I am abroad I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the Government of my country. I make up for lost time when I am at home.
  • In the House of Commons (April 18, 1947), cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations (1996), Jay, Oxford University Press, p. 93

• When I was younger I made it a rule never to take strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast.
  • Reply to King George VI, on a cold morning at the airport. The King had asked if Churchill would take something to warm himself. As cited in Man of the Century (2002), Ramsden, Columbia University Press, p. 134 ISBN 0231131062

• All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: Freedom; Justice; Honour; Duty; Mercy; Hope.
  • United Europe Meeting, Albert Hall, London (May 14, 1947). Cited in Churchill by Himself, ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs (2008), p. 26 ISBN 1586486381

• Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (1947-11-11)
  • The Official Report, House of Commons (5th Series), 11 November 1947, vol. 444, cc. 206–07.

• Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.
  • Speech (May 28, 1948) at the Scottish Unionist Conference, Perth, Scotland, in Never Give In! : The best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches (2003), Hyperion, p. 446 ISBN 1401300561

• For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (January 23, 1948), cited in The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), ed. Shapiro & Epstein, Yale University Press, p. 154 ISBN 0300107986
  • This quote may be the basis for a statement often attributed to Churchill : History will be kind to me. For I intend to write it.

• In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.
  • The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948) Moral of the Work

• One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'.
  • The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948)

• Their horse cavalry, of which they had twelve brigades, charged valiantly against the swarming tanks and armoured cars but could not harm them with their swords and lances.
  • On the Polish defence against Germany, in The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948)

• 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.
  • On his appointment as Prime Minister, May 10, 1940; The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948)

• Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come 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.
  • The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948) Chapter 19 (Prague, Albania, and the Polish Guarantee)

• Baldwin, Stanley ... confesses putting party before country, 169-70; ...
  • Index entry, The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948)

• Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.
  • Speech on receiving the London Times Literary Award November 2, 1949
  • Never Give In! The Best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches, Hyperion (2003), p. 453 ISBN ISBN 1401300561

• The reason for having diplomatic relations is not to confer a compliment, but to secure a convenience.
  • In the House of Commons, November 17, 1949 "Foreign Affairs", on diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China, as cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 16 ISBN 1586486381

• When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.
  • The Second World War, Volume II : Their Finest Hour (1949) Chapter 23 (September Tensions)

• War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
  • On the Soviet Union’s failure to form a united Balkan front against Hitler ; in The Second World War, Volume III : The Grand Alliance (1950) Chapter 20 (The Soviet Nemesis)

• No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not fortell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.
  • The Second World War, Volume III : The Grand Alliance (1950) Chapter 32 (Pearl Harbour)

• Some people did not like this ceremonious style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
  • Churchill ended his December 8, 1941 letter to the Japanese Ambassador, declaring that a state of war now existed between the United Kingdom and Japan, with the courtly flourish "I have the honour to be, with high consideration, Sir, Your obedient servant".
  • The Second World War, Volume III : The Grand Alliance (1950) Chapter 32 (Pearl Harbour)

• It excites world wonder in the Parliamentary countries that we should build a Chamber, starting afresh, which can only seat two-thirds of its Members. It is difficult to explain this to those who do not know our ways. They cannot easily be made to understand why we consider that the intensity, passion, intimacy, informality and spontaneity of our Debates constitute the personality of the House of Commons and endow it at once with its focus and its strength.
  • Speech in the House of Commons, October 24, 1950 "Motion for Address in Reply".

• I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, "Verify your quotations."
  • The Second World War, Volume IV : The Hinge of Fate (1951)

• Let me have the best solution worked out. Don’t argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves.
  • Memo (May 30, 1942) to the Chief of Combined Operations on the design of floating piers (which later became Mulberry Harbours) for use on landing beaches; in The Second World War, Volume V : Closing the Ring (1952) Chapter 4 (Westward Ho! Synthetic Harbours)

• There are two main characteristics of the House of Commons which will command the approval and the support of reflective and experienced Members. The first is that its shape should be oblong and not semicircular. Here is a very potent factor in our political life. The semicircular assembly, which appeals to political theorists, enables every individual or every group to move round the centre, adopting various shades of pink according as the weather changes. I am a convinced supporter of the party system in preference to the group system. I have seen many earnest and ardent Parliaments destroyed by the group system. The party system is much favoured by the oblong form of chamber. It is easy for an individual to move through those insensible gradations from left to right, but the act of crossing the Floor is one which requires serious attention. I am well informed on this matter for I have accomplished that difficult process, not only once, but twice.
  • On the rebuilding of the House of Commons after a bomb blast. The Second World War, Volume V : Closing the Ring (1952) Chapter 9

• Of course, when you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.
  • In The Second World War, Volume V : Closing the Ring (1952) Chapter 12 (Island Prizes Lost)

• ‘In war-time,’ I said, ‘truth is so precious she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’
  • Discussion of Operation Overlord with Stalin at the Teheran Conference (November 30, 1943); in The Second World War, Volume V : Closing the Ring (1952), Chapter 21 (Teheran: The Crux), p.338

• By noon it was clear that the Socialists would have a majority. At luncheon my wife said to me, 'It may well be a blessing in disguise.' I replied, 'At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.'
  • On the (July 26, 1945) landslide electoral defeat that turned him out of office near the end of WWII, in The Second World War, Volume VI : Triumph and Tragedy (1954), Chapter 40 (The End of My Account)

• The object of Parliament is to substitute argument for fisticuffs.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (June 6, 1951) ; in Churchill by Himself, (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 22 ISBN 1586486381

• But now let me return to my theme of the many changes that have taken place since I was last here. There is a jocular saying: ‘To improve is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often.’ I had to use that once or twice in my long career.
  • Address to a joint session of Congress, Washington, D.C., January 17, 1952 "We Must Not Lose Hope", in The Great Republic : A History of America (2000), Churchill, Random House, p. 399 ISBN 0375764407

• Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.
  • As cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 535 ISBN 1586486381
  • Churchill's black cat, Nelson, is reputed to have had a chair at Cabinet.

• Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
  • From a speech given at the Royal Academy of Art in 1953; quoted in Time magazine (1954-05-11)

• To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.
  • Remarks at a White House luncheon (1954-06-26)
  • Quoted in
    • • Has been falsely attributed to Otto von Bismarck.
    
    
    • For myself, I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
      • Speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet in London (1954-11-09)
    
    
    • An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.
      • In Reader's Digest (December 1954)
    
    
    • I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
      • As cited in cited in The Forbes Book of Business Quotations (2007), Ed. Goodwin, Black Dog Publishing, p. 49, ISBN 1579127215
    
    
    • It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.
      • As cited in cited in The Forbes Book of Business Quotations (2007), Ed. Goodwin, Black Dog Publishing, p. 168, ISBN 1579127215
    
    
    • I am a sporting man. I always give them a fair chance to get away.
      • Asked why he missed so many trains and aeroplanes, as cited in My Darling Clementine (1963), Fishman, W.H. Allen : Star Books edition (1974), p. 218 ISBN 0352300191
    
    
    • "Keep England White" is a good slogan.
      • On Commonwealth immigration, recorded in Harold Macmillan's diary entry for 1955-01-20 (Peter Catterall (ed.), The Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet Years, 1950-57 (Macmillan, 2003), p. 382)
    
    
    • This Treasury paper, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.
      • As cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 50, ISBN 1586486389
    
    
    • I want no criticism of America at my table. The Americans criticize themselves more than enough.
      • As cited in Churchill By Himself (2008), Ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 128 ISBN 1586486381
    
    
    • We have surmounted all the perils and endured all the agonies of the past. We shall provide against and thus prevail over the dangers and problems of the future, withhold no sacrifice, grudge no toil, seek no sordid gain, fear no foe. All will be well. We have, I believe, within us the life-strength and guiding light by which the tormented world around us may find the harbour of safety, after a storm-beaten voyage.
      • At Chateau Laurier, Ottawa, Canada, November 9, 1954 ; as cited at The Churchill Centre.
    
    
    • The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.
      • From the ending of Churchill's last major speech in the House of Commons on (1955-03-01)
    
    
    • I think it is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice.
      • To Sir Ian Gilmour on Commonwealth immigration to England in 1955 (Gilmour, Inside Right (Hutchinson, 1977), p. 134)
    
    
    • I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
      • On his 75th birthday, in reply to a question on whether he was afraid of death, quoted in the N. Y. Times Magazine on November 1, 1964, p.40 according to Quote It Completely! (1998), Gerhart, Wm. S. Hein Publishing, p. 262 ISBN 1575884003
    
    
    • We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glow-worm.
      • As quoted by Violet Bonham-Carter in Winston Churchill as I Knew Him (1965), according to The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), ed. Shapiro & Epstein, Yale University Press, p. 155 ISBN 0300107986
    
    

    A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956-58)

    A History of the English Speaking Peoples, in four volumes, much of which had been written in the 1930s. ISBN 0-88029-423-X
    
    • Thus ended the great American Civil War, which upon the whole must be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts of which till then there was record.
    
    
    • No one can understand history without continually relating the long periods which are constantly mentioned to the experiences of our own short lives. Five years is a lot. Twenty years is the horizon to most people. Fifty years is antiquity. To understand how the impact of destiny fell upon any generation of men one must first imagine their position and then apply the time-scale of our own lives.
      • Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • At this point the march of invention brought a new factor upon the scene. Iron was dug and forged. Men armed with iron entered Britain from the Continent and killed the men of bronze. At this point we can plainly recognise across the vanished millenniums a fellow-being. A biped capable of slaying another with iron is evidently to modern eyes a man and a brother.
      • On the end of the Bronze Age and start of the Iron Age, Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • We see the crude and corrupt beginnings of a higher civilization blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes. Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders' hearth.
      • On the sack of Verulamium (St. Albans) by Queen Boadicea
    
    
    • Apparently, as in so many ancient battles, the beaten side were the victims of misunderstanding and the fate of the day was decided against them before the bulk of the forces realised that a serious engagement had begun. Reserves descended from the hills too late to achieve victory, but in good time to be massacred in the rout.
      • On the Battle of Mons Graupius, which ended British resistance to Roman rule, Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • Like other systems in decay, the Roman Empire continued to function for several generations after its vitality was sapped. For nearly a hundred years our Island was one of the scenes of conflict between a dying civilization and lusty, famishing barbarism.
      • On the last years of Roman Britain; Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time.
      • On King Arthur Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • The picture rises before us vivid and bright: the finely carved, dragon-shaped prow; the high, curving stern; the long row of shields, black and yellow alternately, ranged along the sides; the gleam of steel; the scent of murder.
      • On the Viking Long Ships, Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • When we reflect upon the brutal vices of these salt-water bandits, pirates as shameful as any whom the sea has borne, or recoil from their villainous destruction and cruel deeds, we must also remember the discipline, the fortitude, the comradeship and martial virtues which made them at this period beyond all challenge the most formidable and daring race in the world.
      • On The Vikings, Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • When the next year the raiders returned and landed near Jarrow they were stoutly attacked while harassed by bad weather. Many were killed. Their "king" was captured and put to a cruel death, and the fugitives carried so grim a tale back to Denmark that for forty years the English coasts were unravaged.
      • On a Viking Raid in 794 A.D.; Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • "872, Ivar, King of the Northmen of all Ireland and Britain, ended his life." He had conquered Mercia and East Anglia. He had captured the major stronghold of the kingdom of Strathclyde, Dumbarton. Laden with loot and seemingly invincible, he settled in Dublin and died there peacefully two years later. The pious chroniclers report that he "slept in Christ." Thus it may be that he had the best of both worlds.
      • On Ivar, a Viking King (c. 872) Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • A group of pagan ruffians and pirates had gained possession of an effective military and naval machine, but they faced a mass of formidable veterans whom they had to feed and manage, and for whom they must provide killings. Such men make plans, and certainly their descent upon England was one of the most carefully considered and elaborately prepared villainies of that dark time.
      • On the Danish invasion of England in 892; Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • Without any coherent national organisation to repel from the land on which they had settled the ever-unknowable descents from the seas, the Saxons, now for four centuries entitled to be deemed the owners of the soil, very nearly succumbed completely to the Danish inroads. That they did not was due--as almost every critical turn of historic fortune has been due--to the sudden apparition in an era of confusion and decay of one of the great figures of history.
      • On King Alfred the Great; Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • It was Twelfth Night, and the Saxons, who in these days of torment refreshed and fortified themselves by celebrating the feasts of the Church, were off their guard, engaged in pious exercises, or perhaps even drunk. Down swept the ravaging foe. The whole army of Wessex, sole guarantee of England south of the Thames, was dashed into confusion. Many were killed.
      • On King Alfred's defeat by the Danes in January, 878, Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • Civilisation had been restored to the Island. But now the political fabric which nurtured it was about to be overthrown. Hitherto strong men armed had kept the house. Now a child, a weakling, a vacillator, a faithless, feckless creature, succeeded to the warriour throne.
      • On Ethelred the Unready Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • We have seen that Alfred in his day had never hesitated to use money as well as arms. Ethelred used money instead of arms. He used it in ever-increasing quantities, with ever-diminishing returns...There is the record of a final payment to the Vikings in 1012. This time forty-eight thousand pounds' weight of silver was extracted, and the oppressors enforce the collection by the sack of Canterbury, holding Archbishop Alphege to ransom, and finally killing him at Greenwich because he refused to coerce his flock to raise the money. The Chronicle states: "All these calamities fell upon us through evil counsel, because tribute was not offered to them at the right time, nor yet were they resisted; but, when they had done the most evil, then was peace made with them. And notwithstanding all this peace and tribute they went everywhere in companies, harried our wretched people, and slew them"
      • On Ethelred the Unready's policy; Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • It is vain to recount further the catalogue of miseries. In earlier ages such horrors remain unknown because unrecorded. Just enough flickering light plays upon this infernal scene to give us the sense of its utter desolation and hopeless wretchedness and cruelty.
      • On a series of Viking raids Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • The lights of Saxon England were going out, and in the gathering darkness a gentle, grey-beard prophet foretold the end. When on his death-bed Edward spoke of a time of evil that was coming upon the land his inspired mutterings struck terror into the hearers.
      • On the death of King Edward the Confessor in January, 1066, months before the Norman Invasion Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • On September 28 the fleet hove in sight, and all came safely to anchor in Pevensey Bay. There was no opposition to the landing. The local "fyrd" had been called out this year four times already to watch the coast, and having, in true English style, come to the conclusion that the danger was past because it had not yet arrived had gone back to their homes.
      • On the landing of William the Conqueror at Pevensey Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • William now directed his archers to shoot high into the air, so that the arrows would fall behind the shield-wall, and one of these pierced Harold in the right-eye, inflicting a mortal wound. He fell at the foot of the royal standard, unconquerable except by death, which does not count in honour. The hard-fought battle was now decided.
      • On the death of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, Vol I; The Birth of Britain
    
    
    • Joan was a being so uplifted from the ordinary run of mankind that she finds no equal in a thousand years. She embodied the natural goodness and valour of the human race in unexampled perfection. Unconquerable courage, infinite compassion, the virtue of the simple, the wisdom of the just, shone forth in her. She glorifies as she freed the soil from which she sprang.
      • On Saint Joan of Arc ; Volume I: The Birth of Britain, p. 422
    
    

    Disputed quotations

    • Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues and freebooters. All Indian leaders will be of low calibre and men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles.
      • Often cited as from a speech "on the eve of Indian Independence in 1947", e.g. "Anything multiplied by zero is zero indeed!" in Rediff India Abroad (11 April 2007), or even from a speech in the house of Commons, but it does not appear to have any credible source. May have first appeared in the Annual Report of P. N. Oak's discredited "Institute for Rewriting Indian History" in 1979, and is now quoted in at least three books, as well as countless media and websites.
    
    
    • America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these 'isms' wouldn't today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government — and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives.
      • Published as having been made in an (August 1936) interview with William Griffin, editor of the New York Enquirer, who was indicted for sedition by F.D.R.'s Attorney General Francis Biddle in 1942. In a sworn statement before Congress in 1939 Griffin affirmed Churchill had said this; Congressional Record (1939-10-21), vol. 84, p. 686. In 1942, Churchill admitted having had the 1936 interview but disavowed having made the statement (The New York Times, 1942-10-22, p. 13).
      • In his article "The Hidden Tyranny," Benjamin Freedman attributed this quotation to an article in the isolationist publication Scribner's Commentator in 1936. However, that magazine did not exist until 1939. He may have gotten the date wrong or might have been referring to one of its predecessors, Scribner's Monthly or Payson Publishing's The Commentator.
    
    
    • This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.
      • "Churchill on Prepositions", and alt.english.usage at google groups have been the most immediate sources for much of the information which indicates this remark or others like it were probably not remarks actually made by Churchill.
    
    

    The earliest known version makes no mention of Churchill, and appeared in the Strand Magazine, later quoted in the "Pepper and Salt" section of the Wall Street Journal on 1942-09-30:

    
    

    When a memorandum passed round a certain Government department, one young pedant scribbled a postscript drawing attention to the fact that the sentence ended with a preposition, which caused the original writer to circulate another memorandum complaining that the anonymous postscript was "offensive impertinence, up with which I will not put."

    
    

    The earliest known attribution of this to Churchill appears to be in Plain Words (1948) by Sir Ernest Gowers, who writes:

    It is said that Mr. Winston Churchill once made this marginal comment against a sentence that clumsily avoided a prepositional ending: "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put".

    
    

    A far more elaborate version also appeared in the Wall Street Journal on the December 9 that same year:

    
    

    The carping critic who can criticize the inartistic angle of the firemen's hose while they are attempting to put out the fire, has his counterpart in a nameless individual in the British Foreign Office who once found fault with a projected speech by Winston Churchill. It was in the most tragic days of World War II, when the life of Britain, nay, of all Europe, hung in the balance. Churchill prepared a highly important speech to deliver in Parliament, and, as a matter of custom, submitted an advanced draft to the Foreign Office for comment. Back came the speech with no word save a notation that one of the sentences ended with a preposition, and an indication where the error should be eliminated. To this suggestion, the Prime Minister replied with the following note: "This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."

    
    

    Over the years many variants that seem to have been based on informal anecdotes have arisen including:
    "This is the type of pedantry up with which I will not put."
    "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put."

    
    

    Unsourced

    • An old town clerk looking at European affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe
      • On Neville Chamberlain. This quotation, often attributed to Churchill, is also attributed to David Lloyd George.
    
    
    • Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we have to think.
    
    
    • He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
      • On Sir Stafford Cripps
    
    
    • He is the man who brought pederasty into disrepute.
      • On Tom Driberg
    
    
    • He looks like a female llama who has been surprised in the bath
      • On Charles De Gaulle
    
    
    • His ear is so close to the ground, it has locusts in it.
      • On Stanley Baldwin
    
    
    • Eating my own words has never given me indigestion.
    
    
    • If you wanted nothing done at all, Balfour was the man for the job.
      • On Arthur Balfour
    
    
    • I like a man who grins when he fights.
    
    
    • I must warn him that he runs a very grave risk of falling into senility before he is overtaken by age.
      • Churchill's interruption to an MP's rambling speech against his wartime policies.
    
    
    • I neither want it [brandy] nor need it, but I should think it pretty hazardous to interfere with the ineradicable habit of a lifetime.
    
    
    • I think I can save the British Empire from anything — except the British.
      • On the British intellectuals and their severe criticisms of Britain.
    
    
    • If you are going through hell, keep going.
    
    
    • In attack most daring, in defence most cunning, in endurance most steadfast, they performed a feat of arms which will be remembered and recounted as long as the virtues of courage and resolution have power to move the hearts of men. (on the First Airborne Division at Arnhem)
    
    
    • In war it does not matter who is right, but who is left.
    
    
    • Joe loved the working man, he loved to see him work.
      • On Joseph Chamberlain, but probably a misattribution of something said by Aneurin Bevan about Neville Chamberlain.
    
    
    • Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
    
    
    • One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided whenever possible.
    
    
    • One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.
    
    
    • Personally I am of the opinion that four assessments in three days is excessive, especially in an assessment-free week.
      • Addressed to the students of All Saints' College, Australia, remarking on their excessively heavy workload. (needs a date or other sourcing)
    
    
    • Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
    
    
    • Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.
      • This may be an old military aphorism.
    
    
    • So little time, so much to do.
      • On one occasion during an election campaign Churchill was speaking in a church hall in rural England. The hall was decorated in the well accepted colour scheme of that era – mission brown up to shoulder height, then cream up to and including the ceiling. When he finished his speech Churchill called for questions. The first came from a middle-aged woman dressed in country tweeds. "Mr Churchill, I am a member of the Temperance League," she said, "My local branch has been examining your use of alcohol. Are you aware Prime Minister that, during your lifetime to date you have consumed enough alcohol to fill this hall up to here" stretching her arm dramatically to indicate the mission brown zone on the wall. "We want to know what you intend to do about it?" Churchill looked at the woman, followed her arm to the top of the mission brown zone, and then slowly allowed his gaze to move up through the cream zone to the ceiling. "So little time, so much to do" he said.
    
    
    • Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
    
    
    • The biggest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter.
      • Variant: The best argument against democracy is a five-minute talk with the average voter.
    
    
    • The honourable gentleman should not really generate more indignation than he can conveniently contain.
      • To an MP who kept standing and interrupting him.
    
    
    • The price of greatness is responsibility.
      • Variant: The price of leadership is responsibilty.
    
    
    • There, but for the grace of God, goes God.
      • On Sir Stafford Cripps
    
    
    • There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.
    
    
    • The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
    
    
    • The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.
    
    
    • This is Winston Churchill speaking. If you have a microphone in my room, it is a waste of time. I do not talk in my sleep.
      • [When told his room was possibly bugged]
    
    
    • Unless some effective world supergovernment for the purpose of preventing war can be set up ... the prospects for peace and human progress are dark ....If .... it is found possible to build a world organization of irresistible force and inviolable authority for the purpose of securing peace, there are no limits to the blessings which all men enjoy and share.
      • Variant: Unless we establish some form of world government, it will not be possible for us to avert a World War III in the future.
    
    
    • We will not say thereafter that the Greeks fight like heroes, but heroes fight like the Greeks!
      • Statement after the news of Greek victory against fascist Italy
    
    
    • When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
    
    
    • Why stand when you can sit?
    
    
    • Yes, now bugger off.
      • To his grandson after he asked if he was the greatest man alive.
    
    
    • You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
    
    
    • Makes you proud to be British doesn't it?
      • Upon being told that a backbench MP had been caught by the press performing indecent acts with a guardsman in St James' Park during one of the coldest February nights in 30 years
    
    

    Anecdotal dialogue

    Most of these Churchill anecdotes have been widely reported.
    Unless sources are specifically provided, no assumptions should be made about the accuracy of these accounts.
    
    • Shortly before George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion received its first English performance at His Majesty’s Theatre in London
      (on April 11, 1914), Shaw sent the following telegram to Winston Churchill :
      • AM RESERVING TWO TICKETS FOR YOU FOR MY PREMIERE. COME AND BRING A FRIEND – IF YOU HAVE ONE.
    • Churchill sent this telegram to Shaw in reply :
      • IMPOSSIBLE TO BE PRESENT FOR THE FIRST PERFORMANCE. WILL ATTEND THE SECOND – IF THERE IS ONE.
      • Cited in TELEGRAM ! , Linda Rosenkrantz, Macmillan (2003), pp. 55-56 ISBN 0805071016
    
    
    • Lady Nancy Astor: If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee!
      Churchill: And if I were your husband I would drink it!
      • George Thayer (who worked as research assistant to Randolph Churchill on the latter's biography of Winston), wrote in 1971 that this anecdote was false. In any case, this joke appears to be an old one. The January 3, 1900 issue of the Chicago Tribune printed the following: “‘If I had a husband like you,’ she said with concentrated scorn, ‘I'd give him poison!’ ‘Mad'm,’ he rejoined, looking her over with a feeble sort of smile, ‘If I had a wife like you I'd take it.’”
      • As cited in The Yale Book of quotations (2006), ed. Shapiro & Epstein, Yale University Press, p. 155 ISBN 0300107986
    
    
    • Bessie Braddock: Winston, you are drunk, and what's more, you are disgustingly drunk.
      Churchill: Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and what's more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly.
      • This exchange was confirmed to Richard Langworth by Ronald Golding, a bodyguard present on the occasion (as Churchill was leaving the House of Commons in 1946).
      • Note : in the 1934 movie It’s a Gift W.C. Field’s character, when told he is drunk, responds, ‘Yeah, and you’re crazy. But I’ll be sober tomorrow and you’ll be crazy the rest of your life.’
      • As cited in Churchill by Himself, ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 550 ISBN 1586486381
    
    
    • Young man (seeing Churchill leaving the bathroom without washing his hands): At Eton they taught us to wash our hands after using the toilet.
      Churchill: At Harrow they taught us not to piss on our hands.
    
    
    • Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
      Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course...
      Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
      Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
      Churchill: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.
    
    (This is a very old joke where the participants vary dramatically from each telling. It's very unlikely though not impossible that the joke originated from Churchill.)
    
    • Unknown MP, sitting behind Churchill on the back benches during his twilight years, to adjacent colleague, sotto voce: He's not what he used to be. They say he's gone senile.
      Churchill, turning around to face them: And they say he has gone deaf as well!
    
    
    • Upon being told of the Lord Privy Seal's arrival at Chequers :
      • Tell the privy seal, I am sealed to the privy, and can only deal with one shit at a time.
    
    
    • In the Urinals of the House of Commons, upon the entry of Clement Atlee, Churchill moves to the far end of the room:
      • Atlee: My dear Winston, I hope that despite being adversaries in the house, we could be Friends outside of it.
      • Churchill: Ah Clement, I have no quarrel with you, but in my experience, when you see something that's big and works well, you tend to want to nationalize it!
    
    

    Misattributed

    • If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
      • According to research by Mark T. Shirey, citing Nice Guys Finish Seventh: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations by Ralph Keyes, 1992, this quote was first uttered by mid-nineteenth century historian and statesman François Guizot when he observed, Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. This quote has been attributed variously to George Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Disraeli, Otto von Bismarck, and others.
      • Furthermore, the Churchill Centre, on its Falsely Attributed Quotations page, states "there is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this." Paul Addison of Edinburgh University is quoted as stating: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?"
      • Variants: Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.
        Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.
        If you are not a socialist by the time you are 25, you have no heart. If you are still a socialist by the time you are 35, you have no head
    
    
    • There is nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.
      • According to The quote verifier: who said what, where, and when (2006), Keyes, Macmillan, p. 91 ISBN 0312340044 , the cover of a trade magazine once credited this observation to Churchill, but it dates back well into the nineteenth century, and has been variously attributed to Henry Ward Beecher, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Lord Palmerston, among others.
    
    
    • An empty taxi arrived and out of it stepped Attlee.
      • A joke about Clement Attlee doing the rounds after World War II, often wrongly attributed to Churchill. When he heard about that misattribution he said:
        • Mr Attlee is an honourable and gallant gentleman, and a faithful colleague who served his country well at the time of her greatest need. I should be obliged if you would make it clear whenever an occasion arises that I would never make such a remark about him, and that I strongly disapprove of anybody who does.
          • Churchill to John Colville (quoted in Nigel Rees, Sayings of the Century page 106).
    
    
    • All this contains much that is obviously true, and much that is relevant; unfortunately, what is obviously true is not relevant, and what is relevant is not obviously true.
      • This is not by Churchill, but a paraphrase of Churchill quoting Arthur James Balfour in Great Contemporaries (1937): 'there were some things that were true, and some things that were trite; but what was true was trite, and what was not trite was not true'
    
    
    • You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give.
      • Variant: We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
      • Extensive research of writings by and about Churchill at the Churchill Centre fails to indicate that Churchill ever spoke or wrote those words.
        • Some sites list Norman MacEwen as the originator of the quote.
    
    
    • The further backward you look, the further forward you can see.
      • In Churchill by Himself (2008), Appendix I: Red Herrings, ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 577 ISBN 1586486381; “Commonly ascribed to WSC, even by The Queen (Christmas Message, 1999). What Churchill actually said was ‘The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward’.”
    
    
    • Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
      • According to Churchill's assistant, Anthony Montague-Browne, Churchill had not coined this phrase, but wished he had.
    
    
    • The hardest cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine.
      • This remark referring to Charles de Gaulle was actually made by General Louis Spears, Churchill's envoy to France.
      • Film producer Alexander Korda asked Churchill in 1948 if he had made the remark, he replied
        • No, I didn't say it; but I'm sorry I didn't, because it was quite witty ... and so true!
          • Quoted in Nigel Rees, Sayings of the Century page 105.
    
    
    • People often forget that in 1940 there was no guarantee that we were going to win.
      • This quote is actually from Churchill's daughter, Lady Soames. See "The Beacon of the Western Way of Life"
    
    
    • I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
      • This slanderous remark was attributed to Churchill by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to depict him as a liar.
      • (in German: »Ich glaube nur der Statistik, die ich selbst gefälscht habe« )