- The power of the Executive to cast a man into
prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly
to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree
odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether
Nazi or Communist.
- We contend that for a nation
to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket
and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
- A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t
change the subject.
- Nancy Astor: “Sir,
if you were my husband, I would give you poison.”
Churchill:
“If I were your husband I would take it.”
[Unreliable
attribution]
- It is a good thing for
an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
- If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without
blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and
not too costly; you 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.
- I decline utterly to
be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire.
House
of Commons, 7 July 1927
- 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)
- Germany invaded the Soviet
Union in June 1941. Thereafter, Churchill worked hard to build
an effective alliance with his former communist enemy. He defended
his actions, remarking,
“If Hitler invaded Hell,
I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the
House of Commons”.
- An appeaser is one
who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last.
[In
the House of Commons, January 1940]
- I
do not like elections, but it is in my many elections that I have
learnt to know and honour the people of this island. They are
good through and through.
[Thoughts
and Adventures, published 1932]
- There
is not much collective security in a flock of sheep on the way
to the butcher.
[speech at the New
Commonwealth Society luncheon, Dorchester Hotel, 25 November 1936]
- So they [the Government] 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.
[in the House of Commons, 12 November
1936]
- Dictators ride to and fro upon
tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting
hungry. [letter, 11 November 1937]
- The empires of the future are the empires of the
mind.
[speech at Harvard, 6 September
1943]
- Opportunity for all. The British people are good all through. You can test them as you would put a bucket into the sea, and always find it salt. The genius of our people springs from every class, and from every part of the land. You cannot tell where you will find a wonder. The hero, the fighter, the poet, the master of science, the organizer, the artist, the engineer, the administrator, or the jurist - he may spring into fame. Equal opportunity for all, under free institutions and equal law - there is the banner for which we will do battle against all rubber-stamp bureaucracies or dictatorships.
[London, 13 June, 1945]
- We must build a kind of United
States of Europe.
[in Zurich, 19 September
1946]
- 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.
[in
the House of Commons, 11 November 1947]
- 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,
18 April 1947]
- In war: resolution.
In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.
[The Second World War vol. 1 (1948) epigraph, which according to Edward Marsh in A
Number of People (1939), occurred to Churchill shortly
after the conclusion of the First World War]
- A modest man who has much to be modest about.
[of
Clement Attlee; in Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books 27 June 1954]
- I know of no case where
a man added to his dignity by standing on it.
[attributed]
- If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy
all respect for the law.
[attributed]
- Most wars in history have been avoided simply by
postponing them.
[J. K. Galbraith A Life in Our Times (1981) ]
- A sheep in sheep’s clothing. [of Clement Attlee]
[Lord
Home The Way the Wind Blows (1976) ]
- [Said during a lunch with the
Arab leader Ibn Saud, when he heard that the king’s religion
forbade smoking and alcohol]
I must point out that
my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking
cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if
need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.
[Triumph and Tragedy]
- [To Bessie Braddock
MP who told him he was drunk]
And you, madam, are
ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning.
[attributed]
- 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.
[Their finest hour]
- The mood and temper of the public in regard to the
treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing
tests of the civilisation of any country.
A calm and
dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused against
the state, and even of convicted criminals against the state,
a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment,
a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry
all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment,
tireless efforts towards the discovery of curative and regenerating
processes, and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure,
if you can only find it, in the heart of every man these are the
symbols which in the treatment of crime and criminals mark and
measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are the sign and
proof of the living virtue in it.
[House
of Commons speech, given while Home Secretary, July 20, 1910]
- A newly elected young Tory
MP, eagerly taking up a place on the benches and pointing to the
benches opposite, said to Churchill, “So that’s
the enemy”.
Churchill supposedly
replied, “No son, that’s the opposition”,
and then pointed to the benches behind
and said, “That is the enemy”.
- First
- country, second - constituency, third - party.
[attributed]
- We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow worm.
- 'All men are created equal,' says the American Declaration of Independence,
'All men shall be kept equal,' say the British Socialist Party.
[1951 General Election campaign. The Labour Party and its Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, were defeated. They had been in power for six years - 26 July 1945 to 26 October 1951. They had defeated the Conservative Party and the war-time Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.]
- The difference between our outlook and the Socialist outlook on life is the difference between the ladder and the queue. We are for the ladder. Let all try their best climb. They are for the queue. Let each wait in his place until his turn comes.
[1951 General Election campaign.]
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