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

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

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?

I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it.

In time of war, when truth is so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

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.

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

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

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

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

I have taken more good from alcohol than alcohol has taken from me.

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

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle.

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

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

For my own part I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities which he excites among his opponents. I have always set myself not merely to relish but to deserve thoroughly their censure.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind.

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

When you have got a thing where you want, it is a good thing to leave it where it is.

Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.

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.

If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

A cat looks down upon a man, and a dog looks up to a man, but a pig will look a man in the eye and see his equal.

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.

Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.

The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is someone outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; some one strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action.

The object of Parliament is to substitute argument for fisticuffs.

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.

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.

There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.

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

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent, or arrogant Commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations — all take their seats at the Council Board on the morrow of a declaration of war.

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

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 are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.

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.

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

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'.

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

The Government simply cannot make up their mind, or they cannot get the Prime Minister 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.

We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.

In former days, when wars arose from individual causes, from the policy of a Minister or the passion of a King, when they were fought by small regular armies of professional soldiers, and when their course was retarded by the difficulties of communication and supply, and often suspended by the winter season, it was possible to limit the liabilities of the combatants. But now, when mighty populations are impelled on each other, each individual severally embittered and inflamed—when the resources of science and civilisation sweep away everything that might mitigate their fury, a European war can only end in the ruin of the vanquished and the scarcely less fatal commercial dislocation and exhaustion of the conquerors. Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets. The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.

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

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

I had a feeling once about Mathematics, that I saw it all—Depth beyond depth was revealed to me—the Byss and the Abyss. I saw, as one might see the transit of Venus—or even the Lord Mayor's Show, a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly how it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable: and how the one step involved all the others. It was like politics. But it was after dinner and I let it go!

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be 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.

Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.

We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glow-worm.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

The Times is speechless, and takes three columns to express its speechlessness.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

The forces of progress clash with those of reaction.

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

I am going to tell you something you must not tell to any human being. We have split the atom. The report of the great experiment has just come in. A bomb was let off in some wild spot in New Mexico. It was only a thirteen-pound bomb, but it made a crater half a mile across. People ten miles away lay with their feet towards the bomb; when it went off they rolled over and tried to look at the sky. But even with the darkest glasses it was impossible. It was the middle of the night, but it was as if seven suns had lit the earth; two hundred miles away the light could be seen. The bomb sent up smoke into the stratosphere... It is the Second Coming. The secret has been wrested from nature.

Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.

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.

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 judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

Nuclear energy is incomparably greater than the molecular energy which we use today.... What is lacking is the match to set the bonfire alight.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonour. They chose dishonour. They will have war.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and – quite as dangerous ... In war, you can only be killed once. But in politics many times.

Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history.

The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. ... Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.

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.

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

Although always prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it should be postponed.

We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.

Certainly the prolonged education indispensable to the progress of Society is not natural to mankind. It cuts against the grain. A boy would like to follow his father in pursuit of food or prey. He would like to be doing serviceable things so far as his utmost strength allowed. He would like to be earning wages however small to help to keep up the home. He would like to have some leisure of his own to use or misuse as he pleased. He would ask little more than the right to work or starve. And then perhaps in the evenings a real love of learning would come to those who are worthy – and why try to stuff in those who are not? – and knowledge and thought would open the ‘magic casements’ of the mind.

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 and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.

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.

Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be made like this?

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

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

It is the habit of the boa constrictor to besmear the body of his victim with a foul slime before he devours it; and there are many people in England, and perhaps elsewhere, who seem to be unable to contemplate military operations for clear political objects, unless they can cajole themselves into the belief that their enemy are utterly and hopelessly vile. To this end the Dervishes, from the Mahdi and the Khalifa downwards, have been loaded with every variety of abuse and charged with all conceivable crimes. This may be very comforting to philanthropic persons at home; but when an army in the field becomes imbued with the idea that the enemy are vermin who cumber the earth, instances of barbarity may easily be the outcome.

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.

You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. 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.

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.

Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable?

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

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

If we win, nobody will care. If we lose, there will be nobody to care.

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.

If you destroy a free market you create a black market.

I see [it said that] leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the ... nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.

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

Land monopoly is not the only monopoly which exists, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies; it is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

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.

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

India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator.

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

Golf is a game in which you try to put a small ball in a small hole with implements singularly unsuited to the purpose.

I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion's roar.