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What are the best Winston Churchill quotes?
Sir Winston Churchill is one of the most quoted persons in recent human history. He was the British Prime Minister who led the United Kingdom through World War 2.
Although criticized for being racist and deliberately causing the Bengal Famine, he is considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures in the Western hemisphere.
As per Wikipedia, Churchill is generally viewed as a victorious wartime leader who played an important role in defending liberal democracy against the spread of fascism.
Known for his long affair with alcohol, Churchill was also a prominent writer. He started writing while serving in the British Army. He wrote several books about his military campaigns in India.
Winston Churchill's œuvre includes one novel, two biographies, three volumes of memoirs among several other literary pieces. In 1953, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The 50 Best Winston Churchill Quotes
A woman by the name of Lady Astor once said to Winston Churchill, "If you were my husband I would put poison in your tea." Churchill's reply was one of the most quotable lines in social media: "Ma'am if you were my wife I would drink it."
Therefore, in today's article I've rounded up the best quotes from Winston Churchill. These are the quotes you should live by.
Kicking of the list with success quotes:
1. "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
2. "Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm"
3. "It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required."
4. "All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: Freedom. Justice. Honor. Duty. Mercy. Hope."
5. "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."
6. "All I can say is that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."
7. "If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."
8. "Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human quality… because it is the quality which guarantees all others."
9. "In war, resolution. In defeat, defiance. In victory, magnanimity. In peace, good will."
10. "My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me."
11. "To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often."
12. "Books, in all their variety, offer the human intellect the means by which civilization may be carried triumphantly forward."
13. "Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse."
14. "When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."
15. "Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is the key to unlocking our potential."
16. "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."
17. "My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best."
18. "Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: we are still masters of our fate. We are still the captain of our souls."
19. "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
20. "Politics is 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."
21. "Politics are almost as exciting as war, and — quite as dangerous… in war, you can only be killed once. But in politics many times."
22. "The price of greatness is responsibility."
23. "There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right."
24. "We must beware of needless innovation, especially when guided by logic."
25. "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes."
26. "Of course, when you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise."
27. "Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon."
28. "Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down."
29. "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."
30. "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
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| Winston Churchill at his seat in the Cabinet Room at No 10 Downing Street, London. (Public Domain) |
31. "Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them."
32. "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."
33. "We are all worms, But I do believe that I am a glow-worm."
34. "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."
35. "We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out."
36. "Time after time, history ran over the luddites and romanticists, those who sought to restore the old and delay the new. And every time, history did it with faster, more reliable and more advanced vehicles."
37. "When I was younger I made it a rule never to take strong drinks before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast."
38. "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
39. "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
40. "If you are going through hell, keep going."
41. "Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."
42. "There is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure."
43. "I never worry about action, but only inaction."
44. "The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."
45. "It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time."
46. "I'm certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod."
47. "Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."
48. "To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real."
49. "This is the lesson: 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."
50. "We shall go on to the end… 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."
Final Thoughts
Hope you enjoyed reading these quotes from Winston Churchill.
As a side note, the British actor Gary Oldman starred as Churchill in the 2017 biographical film the Darkest Hour. The movie depicts Winston Churchill's early days as Prime Minister of the UK during World War 2.
That said, what's your favorite Winston Churchill quote? Let me know in the comments. I'll reply to each one of them.