- 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 judegement
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
- 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]
- 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 Atlee; 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
Secretery, July 20, 1910]
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