Winston Churchill » Quotes

(commenting on the Battle of Britain) Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender."

((speech, 30th March 1940)) Although the fate of Poland stares them in the face, there are thoughtless dilettanti or purblind wordlings who sometimes ask us, 'What is it that Britain and France are fighting for?' To this I answer, 'If we left off fighting you would soon find out!'

"Golf is a game whose aim it is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose."

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

"I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught."

"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."

"Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant."

"Already by 1900 I could boast I had written as many books as Moses."

"We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us."

Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it's the best system we have.

(on the Soviet Union) It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

(upon hearing of the love affair between Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend) What a delightful match. A lovely young royal lady married to a gallant young airman, safe from the perils and horrors of war.

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

(on his deathbed) I'm so bored with it all.