Quotes

I cannot but think we have much to be thankful for, and more still to hope for in the future.

Churchill to David Lloyd George, 9 December 1918 (cited in Langworth, Churchill: In His Own Words)

Fighting is vigorously proceeding, and we shall see who can stand the bucketing best — Briton or Boer.

Churchill, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria

You do your worst and we will do our best.

Churchill, speech at County Hall, London, 7 July 1941

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.

Winston Churchill, 4 June 1940

Churchill, 1906, cited in Violet Bonham Carter’s Winston Churchill; An Intimate Portrait (1965)

‘A gentleman does not have a ham sandwich without mustard.’

Dinner with Churchill: Policymaking at the Dinner Table, Cita Stelzer, p 94. 

“The mood of Britain is wisely and rightly averse from every form of shallow or premature exultation. This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is this—a year ago our position looked forlorn, and well nigh desperate, to all eyes but our own. Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world, ‘We are still masters of our fate. We still are captain of our souls.'”

       —House of Commons, 9 September 1941

“Canada is the linchpin of the English-speaking world. Canada, with those relations of friendly, affectionate intimacy with the United States on the one hand and with her unswerving fidelity to the British Commonwealth and the Motherland on the other, is the link which joins together these great branches of the human family, a link which, spanning the oceans, brings the continents into their true relation and will prevent in future generations any growth of division between the proud and the happy nations of Europe and the great countries which have come into existence in the New World.”

—Mansion House, London, 4 September 1941, at a luncheon in honour of Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada.

Winston Churchill and Harry Truman arrive in Fulton, Missouri on 5 March 1946

On 5 March 1946, Winston Churchill gave his famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The speech that Churchill called the ‘Sinews of Peace’ later became better known for the famous phrase it contained, ‘iron curtain’.

But did Churchill coin the phrase?

Churchill’s first known use of the phrase was in a letter to President Truman in May of 1945, where he wrote:

‘An iron curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind. There seems little doubt that the whole of the region Lubeck-Trieste-Corfu will soon be completely in their hands. [Following American withdrawal] a broad band of many hundreds of miles of Russian-occupied territory will isolate us from Poland.…it would be open to the Russians in a very short time to advance if they chose, to the waters of the North Sea and the Atlantic.’