Winston Churchill quotes for UPSC

I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire.

All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: Freedom; Justice; Honour; Duty; Mercy; Hope.

This was one of the heaviest blows I can recall during the war....It was a bitter moment. Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.

In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.

In the course of my life I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.

It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

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.

We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.

There is always a strong case for doing nothing, especially for doing nothing yourself.

This Treasury paper, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

The reason for having diplomatic relations is not to confer a compliment, but to secure a convenience.

Eaten bread is soon forgotten. Dangers which are warded off by effective precautions and foresight are never even remembered.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

The object of presenting medals, stars, and ribbons is to give pride and pleasure to those who have deserved them. At the same time a distinction is something which everybody does not possess. If all have it it is of less value ... A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow.

The Government simply cannot make up their minds, or they cannot get the Prime Minister [Stanley Baldwin] to make up his mind. So they 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.

If you make 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

The object of Parliament is to substitute argument for fisticuffs.

War is horrible, but slavery is worse, and you may be sure that the British people would rather go down fighting than live in servitude.

Whatever one may think about democratic government, it is just as well to have practical experience of its rough and slatternly foundations. No part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

The wars fanned the wings of science, and science brought to mankind a thousand blessings, a thousand problems and a thousand perils.

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.

You may try to destroy wealth, and find that all you have done is to increase poverty.

Taxes are an evil—a necessary evil, but still an evil, and the fewer of them we have the better.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

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.

We have pushed taxation of wealth to a point in Great Britain where in many cases the yield would be greater if the rate were less. The idea that prosperity can be wooed by chasing millionaires is one of the most common and most foolish of modern popular delusions.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

We do not covet anything from any nation except their respect.

War arises from both sides feeling they have a hope of victory.

There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.

We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward cross the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.

Great Britain could have no other object but to use her whole influence and resources consistently over a long period of years to weave France and Germany so closely together economically, socially and morally, as to prevent the occasion of quarrels and make their causes die in a realization of mutual prosperity and interdependence.

It is with deep grief I watch the clattering down of the British Empire, with all its glories and all the services it has rendered to mankind. ... Many have defended Britain against her foes. None can defend her against herself.

No one in England has ever wished to prevent the fullest expression of Scottish or Welsh traditions and customs. Indeed, their manifestation is regarded with pleasure and pride by the English people. We have reaped great advantages from this tolerant mood.

Of course, when you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

I submit respectfully to the House as a general principle that our responsibility in this matter is directly proportionate to our power. Where there is great power there is great responsibility, where there is less power there is less responsibility, and where there is no power there can, I think, be no responsibility.

Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.

A free Press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that freemen prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny.

Everyone is in favour 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 says anything back, that is an outrage

The shores of History are strewn with the wrecks of Empires.

Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

Is there any need for further floods of agony? Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable? Let there be justice, mercy and freedom. The people have only to will it, and all will achieve their hearts' desire.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

The maxim Nothing avails but perfection may be spelt shorter: Paralysis.

I do think unpunctuality is a vile habit, and all my life I have tried to break myself of it.

Let me have the best solution worked out. Don't argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves.

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 the glory of the climb.

For myself I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

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.

The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.

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.

To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.

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.

A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward ... Let us have no fear of the future.

I wonder whether any other generation has seen such astounding revolutions of data and values as those through which we have lived. Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent and vital, has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

We must establish on broad and solid foundations a National Health Service. Here let me say that there is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies. Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.