Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965), full name Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, was a British soldier, politician, statesman, and writer. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War from 1940 to 1945, and also again from 1951 to 1955. Ideologically, he was an economic liberal and imperialist.

Wisdom & Quotes

• I have taken more good from alcohol than alcohol has taken from me.

- quoted by Quentin Reynolds

• I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

- speech, May 13, 1940

• Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

- The Story of the Malakand Field Force

• Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

- speech, House of Commons, November, 1947

• Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

- While England Slept

• This was the finest hour.

- speech, June 18, 1940

• Some people's idea of (free speech) is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.

- speech, October 13, 1943

• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

- speech, March 5, 1946

• Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.

- quoted by Sir Peter Gretton, Former Naval Person

• It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

- Roving Commission in My Early Life

• It (Russia) is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside and enigma.

- radio speech, October 1, 1939

• Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

- speech, August 20, 1940

• We shall go on to the end ... we shall defend out 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.

- speech, June 4, 1940

• When a nation has allowed itself to fall under a tyrannical regime, it cannot be absolved from the faults due to the guilt of the regime.

- speech, July 28, 1944

• The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

- speech, November 11, 1942

• 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, May 13, 1940

• This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

- attributed, quoted by Sir Ernest Gowers, Plain Words

Gilbert Keith Chesterton