Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Quotes

• It helps to write down half a dozen things which are worrying me. Two of them, say, disappear; about two, nothing can be done, so it’s no use worrying, and two perhaps can be settled.

• Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into a even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill- designed for the purpose.

• All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

• It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.

• Success is never final.

• Statistics are like a drunk with a lampost: used more for support than illumination.

• 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.... 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 say, This was their finest hour.

• A politician needs 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.

• An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

• A woman once drove me to drink, and I never had the decency to thank her.

• "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."

• We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.

• Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong-these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

• Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep them in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

• We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official, a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges.

• The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

• Where there is a great deal of free speech there is always a certain amount of foolish speech.

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

• I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is much better policy to prophesy after the event has taken place.

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