Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill[a] (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an adherent to economic liberalism and imperialism, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.
Winston Churchill Quotes
1. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
— Winston Churchill
2. “If you are going through hell, keep going.”
— Winston Churchill
3. “The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible , and achieves the impossible.”
— Winston Churchill
4. “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
— Winston Churchill
5. “You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”
— Winston Churchill
6. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
— Winston Churchill
7. “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”
— Winston Churchill
8. “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill
9. “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
— Winston Churchill
10. “The price of greatness is responsibility.”
— Winston Churchill
11. “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”
— Winston Churchill
12. “Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about.”
— Winston Churchill
13. “A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.”
— Winston Churchill
14. “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
— Winston Churchill
15. “My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.”
— Winston Churchill
16. “Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.”
— Winston Churchill
17. “Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
— Winston Churchill
18. “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.”
— Winston Churchill
19. “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
— Winston Churchill
20. “Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.”
— Winston Churchill
21. “Never, never, never give in!”
— Winston Churchill
22. “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.”
— Winston Churchill
23. “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
— Winston Churchill
24. “I never worry about action, but only about inaction.”
— Winston Churchill
25. “It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.”
— Winston Churchill
26. “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”
— Winston Churchill
27. “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”
— Winston Churchill
28. “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
— Winston Churchill
29. “We shall never surrender.”
— Winston Churchill
30. “If you find a job you love, you’ll never work again…”
— Winston Churchill
31. “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 honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
— Winston Churchill
32. “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.”
— Winston Churchill
33. “Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.”
— Winston Churchill
34. “Keep calm and carry on.”
— Winston Churchill
35. “When you’re 20 you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place. You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill
36. “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
— Winston Churchill
37. “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”
— Winston Churchill
38. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
— Winston Churchill
39. “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.”
— Winston Churchill
40. “We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls.”
— Winston Churchill
41. “Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.”
— Winston Churchill
42. “For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.”
— Winston Churchill
43. “There is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.”
— Winston Churchill
44. “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”
— Winston Churchill
45. “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.”
— Winston Churchill
46. “If you don’t take change by the hand, it will take you by the throat.”
— Winston Churchill
47. “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.”
— Winston Churchill
48. “It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.”
— Winston Churchill
49. “You create your own universe as you go along.”
— Winston Churchill
50. “I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what they do. Behavior never lies.”
— Winston Churchill
51. “The Fascists of the future will be the anti-fascists.”
— Winston Churchill
52. “Those who plan do better than those who do not plan, even should they rarely stick to their plan.”
— Winston Churchill
53. “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
— Winston Churchill
54. “The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.”
— Winston Churchill
55. “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
— Winston Churchill
56. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
— Winston Churchill
57. “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
— Winston Churchill
58. “All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.”
— Winston Churchill
59. “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
— Winston Churchill
60. “The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself.”
— Winston Churchill
61. “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”
— Winston Churchill
62. “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.”
— Winston Churchill
63. “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 glory of the climb.”
— Winston Churchill
64. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
— Winston Churchill
65. “We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.”
— Winston Churchill
66. “We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”
— Winston Churchill
67. “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
— Winston Churchill
68. “If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.”
— Winston Churchill
69. “In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnaminity In Peace: Good Will.”
— Winston Churchill
70. “When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.”
— Winston Churchill
71. “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.”
— Winston Churchill
72. “Most of the world’s work is done by people who don’t feel very well.”
— Winston Churchill
73. “Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”
— Winston Churchill
74. “Good and great are seldom in the same man.”
— Winston Churchill
75. “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”
— Winston Churchill
76. “Don’t interrupt me while I’m interrupting.”
— Winston Churchill
77. “Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.”
— Winston Churchill
78. “The most important thing about education is appetite.”
— Winston Churchill
79. “A joke is a very serious thing.”
— Winston Churchill
80. “Our future is in our hands. Our lives are what we choose to make them.”
— Winston Churchill
81. “I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
— Winston Churchill
82. “A small lie needs a bodyguard of bigger lies to protect it.”
— Winston Churchill
83. “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
— Winston Churchill
84. “Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.”
— Winston Churchill
85. “There are plenty of good ideas, if only they can be backed with the power of action.”
— Winston Churchill
86. “Rugby is a hooligans game played by gentlemen.”
— Winston Churchill
87. “When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone.”
— Winston Churchill
88. “A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.”
— Winston Churchill
89. “If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”
— Winston Churchill
90. “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.”
— Winston Churchill
91. “I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.”
— Winston Churchill
92. “The difference between mere management and leadership is communication.”
— Winston Churchill
93. “Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.”
— Winston Churchill
94. “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.”
— Winston Churchill
95. “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.”
— Winston Churchill
96. “I am all for your using machines, but do not let them use you.”
— Winston Churchill
97. “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
— Winston Churchill
98. “The oldest habit in the world for resisting change is to complain that unless the remedy to the disease should be universally applied it should not be applied at all. But you must start somewhere.”
— Winston Churchill
99. “There comes into the life of every man a task for which he and he alone is uniquely suited. What a shame if that moment finds him either unwilling or unprepared for that which would become his finest hour.”
— Winston Churchill
100. “There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained.”
— Winston Churchill
101. “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. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth.”
— Winston Churchill
102. “Islam to a man is like rabies to a dog.”
— Winston Churchill
103. “We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
— Winston Churchill
104. “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.”
— Winston Churchill
105. “The unforgivable sin of Hitler’s Germany was to develop a new economic system by which the international bankers were deprived of their profits.”
— Winston Churchill
106. “One man with conviction will overwhelm a hundred who have only opinions.”
— Winston Churchill
107. “A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.”
— Winston Churchill
108. “This paper, by its very length, defends itself from ever being read.”
— Winston Churchill
109. “Life is a test and this world a place of trial.”
— Winston Churchill
110. “To improve is to change.”
— Winston Churchill
111. “It is wonderful how well men can keep secrets they have not been told.”
— Winston Churchill
112. “You can measure a man’s character by the choices he makes under pressure.”
— Winston Churchill
113. “Great success always comes at the risk of enormous failure.”
— Winston Churchill
114. “The most beautiful voice in the world is that of an educated Southern woman.”
— Winston Churchill
115. “The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.”
— Winston Churchill
116. “We have no lasting friends, no lasting enemies, only lasting interests.”
— Winston Churchill
117. “If I had my way, I would write the word ‘insure’ over every door of every cottage and upon the blotting pad of every public man, because I am convinced that, for sacrifice that are conceivably small, families can be secured against catastrophes which otherwise would smash them forever.”
— Winston Churchill
118. “Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.”
— Winston Churchill
119. “Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.”
— Winston Churchill
120. “A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.”
— Winston Churchill
121. “Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it all others depend.”
— Winston Churchill
122. “Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.”
— Winston Churchill
123. “No one ever finds life worth living – one has to make it worth living.”
— Winston Churchill
124. “If you want to discover new oceans, you must first have the courage to leave shore.”
— Winston Churchill
125. “Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but heroes fight like Greeks.”
— Winston Churchill
126. “I like things to happen, and if they don’t happen I like to make them happen.”
— Winston Churchill
127. “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.”
— Winston Churchill
128. “Here life itself, life at its best and healthiest, awaits the caprice of the bullet. Let us see the development of the day. All else may stand over, perhaps for ever. Existence is never so sweet as when it is at hazard.”
— Winston Churchill
129. “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”
— Winston Churchill
130. “I’m too busy. I have no time for worry.”
— Winston Churchill
131. “You must look at facts, because they look at you.”
— Winston Churchill
132. “There comes a precious moment in all of our lives when we are tapped on the shoulder and offered the opportunity to do something very special that is unique to us and our abilities, what a tragedy it would be if we are not ready or willing.”
— Winston Churchill
133. “We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end.”
— Winston Churchill
134. “If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”
— Winston Churchill
135. “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.”
— Winston Churchill
136. “It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”
— Winston Churchill
137. “Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.”
— Winston Churchill
138. “I do not apologize for the takeover of the region by the Jews from the Palestinians in the same way I don’t apologize for the takeover of America by the whites from the Red Indians or the takeover of Australia from the blacks. It is natural for a superior race to dominate an inferior one.”
— Winston Churchill
139. “If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.”
— Winston Churchill
140. “The cemetery is full of indispensable people.”
— Winston Churchill
141. “You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.”
— Winston Churchill
142. “You must put your head into the lion’s mouth if the performance is to be a success.”
— Winston Churchill
143. “Rules were made for fools to follow and wise men to be guided by.”
— Winston Churchill
144. “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”
— Winston Churchill
145. “Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves, and to save all those who rely upon you. You have only to go right on, and at the end of the road, be it short or long, victory and honor will be found.”
— Winston Churchill
146. “Without victory there is no survival!”
— Winston Churchill
147. “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”
— Winston Churchill
148. “There comes a special moment in everyone’s life, a moment for which that person was born. That special opportunity, when he seizes it, will fulfill his mission – a mission for which he is uniquely qualified. In that moment, he will find greatness. It is his finest hour.”
— Winston Churchill
149. “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
— Winston Churchill
150. “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
— Winston Churchill
151. “I’d rather argue against a hundred idiots, than have one agree with me.”
— Winston Churchill
152. “With integrity, nothing else counts. Without integrity, nothing else counts.”
— Winston Churchill
153. “Success always demands a greater effort.”
— Winston Churchill
154. “From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”
— Winston Churchill
155. “If you don’t have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything.”
— Winston Churchill
156. “Old men make war, young men fight and die.”
— Winston Churchill
157. “I love learning, but hate being taught.”
— Winston Churchill
158. “In war, truth is often the first casualty.”
— Winston Churchill
159. “Without courage all other virtues lose their meaning.”
— Winston Churchill
160. “It’s Never Over ’till it’s over! Never Give Up! Never.”
— Winston Churchill
161. “The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.”
— Winston Churchill
162. “For the first 25 years of my life, I wanted freedom. For the next 25 years, I wanted order. For the next 25 years, I realized that order is freedom.”
— Winston Churchill
163. “There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”
— Winston Churchill
164. “I’m going to make a long speech because I’ve not had the time to prepare a short one.”
— Winston Churchill
165. “Your day will go the way the corners of your mouth turn.”
— Winston Churchill
166. “The first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not trade; character, not technicalities.”
— Winston Churchill
167. “Do not trust any statistics you did not fake yourself.”
— Winston Churchill
168. “Plans are worthless. Planning is priceless.”
— Winston Churchill
169. “To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real.”
— Winston Churchill
170. “Perfectionism spells paralysis.”
— Winston Churchill
171. “We proceeded systematically, village by village and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation.”
— Winston Churchill
172. “The opposition occupies the benches in front of you, but the enemy sits behind you.”
— Winston Churchill
173. “The future is unknowable, but the past should give us hope.”
— Winston Churchill
174. “Victory is not final. Defeat is not failure. It’s all about courage.”
— Winston Churchill
175. “There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away.”
— Winston Churchill
176. “Meet success like a gentleman; disaster like a man.”
— Winston Churchill
177. “I never slept as soundly as the night following Pearl Harbor. For I knew that The American Race would now be entering the war and it would never be the same.”
— Winston Churchill
178. “We are shaping the world faster than we can change ourselves, and we are applying to the present the habits of the past.”
— Winston Churchill
179. “Preparation is – if not the key to genius – then at least the key to sounding like a genius.”
— Winston Churchill
180. “Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.”
— Winston Churchill
181. “We shall fight in parking lots, we shall fight in empty fields and on wide streets, we shall never surrender.”
— Winston Churchill
182. “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?”
— Winston Churchill
183. “Writing is an adventure.”
— Winston Churchill
184. “Courage is the greatest virtue because it guarantees all the rest.”
— Winston Churchill
185. “There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.”
— Winston Churchill
186. “Air superiority is the ultimate expression of military power.”
— Winston Churchill
187. “You must understand that this war is not against Hitler or National Socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it is in the hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest.”
— Winston Churchill
188. “I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar.”
— Winston Churchill
189. “Politics is more dangerous than war, for in war you are only killed once.”
— Winston Churchill
190. “Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.”
— Winston Churchill
191. “English literature is a glorious inheritance which is open to all – there are no barriers, no coupons, and no restrictions. In the English language and in its great writers there are great riches and treasures, of which, of course, the Bible and Shakespeare stand along on the highest platform.”
— Winston Churchill
192. “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”
— Winston Churchill
193. “You create your own universe as you go along. The stronger your imagination, the more variegated your universe. When you leave off dreaming, the universe ceases to exist.”
— Winston Churchill
194. “It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do.”
— Winston Churchill
195. “The United Nations was set up not to get us to heaven, but only to save us from hell.”
— Winston Churchill
196. “Danger gathers upon our path. We cannot afford – we have no right – to look back. We must look forward.”
— Winston Churchill
197. “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
— Winston Churchill
198. “A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life.”
— Winston Churchill
199. “At the beginning of this War megalomania was the only form of sanity.”
— Winston Churchill
200. “Time is one thing that can never be retrieved. One may lose and regain friends. One may lose and regain money. Opportunity, once spurned, may come again. But the hours that are lost in idleness can never be brought back to be used in gainful pursuits.”
— Winston Churchill
