My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.
It's no use saying, We are doing our best. You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
I never worry about action, but only inaction.
In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used frequently to take my advice.
We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.
No two on earth in all things can agree. All have some daring singularity.
I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
Always remember, a cat looks down on man, a dog looks up to man, but a pig will look man right in the eye and see his equal.
We have a lot of anxieties, and one cancels out another very often.
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Goodwill.
It is all right to rat, but you can't re-rat.
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
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.
It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.
There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.
I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.
Socialism is like a dream. Sooner or later you wake up to reality.
The substance of the eminent Socialist gentlemen's speech is that making a profit is a sin. It is my belief that the real sin is taking a loss!
It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Socialists think profits are a vice; I consider losses the real vice.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile -- hoping it will eat him last.
The English never draw a line without blurring it.
There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right.
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.
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.
Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.
When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
Danger -- if you meet it promptly and without flinching -- you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
Nothing is so exhilarating in life as to be shot at with no result.
I am ready to meet my maker, but whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
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.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount.
Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.
The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.
No comment is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.
I have never accepted what many people have kindly said-namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it.
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
It is better to be frightened now than killed hereafter
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.
Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.
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 others that have been tried from time to time.
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
Great and good are seldom the same man.
The price of greatness is responsibility.
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, 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.
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 myself.
We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.
It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
Moral of the Work. In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.
The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.
If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it.
The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground.
I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion's roar.
Personally, I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.
The empires of the futures are the empires of the mind.
All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.
He is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about.
There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.
Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. [About Russia]
The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.
Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.
There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.
These are not dark days: these are great days -- the greatest days our country has ever lived.
Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never, never -- in nothing great or small, large or petty. Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
Never, never, never, never give up.
Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves.
I'm just preparing my impromptu remarks.
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
There is in the act of preparing, the moment you start caring.
In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.
Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.
Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.
Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.
Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read a book of quotations.
Responsibility is the price of greatness.
No crime is so great as daring to excel.
Play the game for more than you can afford to lose... only then will you learn the game.
I am easily satisfied with the very best.
The latest refinements of science are linked with the cruelties of the Stone Age.
Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.
Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.
When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.
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.
Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
Say what you have to say and first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending; sit down.
Opening amenities are often opening inanities.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use the pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time; a tremendous whack.
Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.
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.
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
Short words are the best and old words when short are best of all.
War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.
We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.
If I was your wife Sir, I'd poison you! Madam, if you were my wife, I'd let you!
This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.
I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.
Eating words has never given me indigestion.
Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
When I look back on all the worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.
Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.