Quotes

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.

Winston Churchill

It is arguable whether the human race have been gainers by the march of science beyond the steam engine. Electricity opens a field of infinite conveniences to ever greater numbers, but they may well have to pay dearly for them. But anyhow in my thought I stop short of the internal combustion engine which has made the world so much smaller. Still more must we fear the consequences of entrusting to a human race so little different from their predecessors of the so-called barbarous ages such awful agencies as the atomic bomb. Give me the horse.

Winston Churchill, 10 July 1951, Royal College of Physicians, London

‘United wishes and good will cannot overcome brute facts,’ Churchill wrote in his War Memoirs. ‘Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is.’

Winston Churchill

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

Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 22 October 1945

In the twinkling of an eye, I found myself without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix.

Churchill, 1931, ‘Election Memories’, Strand Magazine

In politics when you are in doubt what to do, do nothing … when you are in doubt what to say, say what you really think.

Churchill, 26 July 1905, North-West Manchester (cited in Langworth, Churchill: In His Own Words)

Danger gathers upon our path. We cannot afford – we have no right – to look back. We must look forward

Winston Churchill, 10 December 1936

One would have thought that if there was one cause in the world which the Conservative party would have hastened to defend, it would be the cause of the British Empire in India … Our fight is hard. It will also be long … But win or lose, we must do our duty. If the British people are to lose their Indian Empire, they shall do so with their eyes open.

Churchill, 18 March 1931

Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.

Sir John Colville’s diary, The Fringes of Power, paraphrases this well-known phrase of Churchill’s, which may, in fact, be manufactured since no direct attribution can be found, but Richard M. cited in Langworth, editor of Churchill: In His Own Words, feels that ‘re-rat’ has been mentioned by too many sources to doubt that Churchill coined it.