Quotes

A list of some of the best ‘one-liner’ Churchill  quotes

Searching the internet will return hundreds of short quotes attributed to Winston Churchill–many of which are incorrect. Here we examine a list of Churchill’s best ‘one-liners’ throughout his life.

“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” —1898

“I object on principle to doing by legislation what properly belongs to human good feeling and charity.” -1902

“War never pays its dividends in cash on the money it costs.” —1901

“Those who dealt in guineas were not usually of the impoverished class.” —1903 (The guinea, 21 shillings or £1/1/0, was sometimes featured in snooty adverts promoting high-priced goods in guineas rather than pounds.)

“Direct taxation was a great corrector of extravagance.” —1904

“The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.” —1905

Champagne

‘A single glass of champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration. The nerves are braced, the imagination is agreeably stirred, the wits become more nimble. A bottle produces a contrary effect. Excess causes a comatose insensibility. So it is with war, and the quality of both is best discovered by sipping. Winston Churchill, 1898, Malakand Field Force.

‘First things first. Get the champagne.’ Winston Churchill, 1931, New York.

‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

‘…it is better to be both right and consistent. But if you have to choose—you must choose to be right.’

According to Sir Martin Gilbert, on October 28 1951, in an attempt to persuade the Liberals to join his new Government as Prime Minister for the second time, Winston Churchill had invited the Leader of the Liberal Parliamentary Party, Clement Davies, to visit him. Pitblado (his Principal Private Secretary) later recalled how, as the talk progressed, Churchill ‘was politely gloomy’. At one point the conversation turned to the past:

Is France finished? Is that long and famous history, adorned by so many manifestations of genius and valour, bearing with it so much that is precious to culture and civilisation, and above all to the liberties of mankind—is all that now to sink for ever into the ocean of the past, or will France rise again and resume her rightful place in the structure of what may one day be again the family of Europe? I declare to you here, on this considerable occasion, even now when misguided or suborned Frenchmen are firing upon their rescuers, I declare to you my faith that France will rise again.

‘I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all. I scribbled all my opinions on the margins of the pages, and very soon found myself a vehement partisan of the author against the disparagements of his pompous-pious editor.… From Gibbon I went to Macaulay. I had learnt [as a boy] The Lays of Ancient Rome by heart, and loved them; and of course I knew he had written a history; but I had never read a page of it.…I accepted all Macaulay wrote as gospel, and I was grieved to read his harsh judgments upon the Great Duke of Marlborough. There was no one at hand to tell me that this historian with his captivating style and devastating self-confidence was the prince of literary rogues, who always preferred the tale to the truth, and smirched or glorified great men and garbled documents according as they affected his drama.’

26th August 1946: Former British prime minister Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine make a toast upon their arrival in Switzerland. (© Photo by Keystone/Getty Images.)‘Here’s to 1942, here’s to a year of toil—a year of struggle and peril, and a long step forward towards victory. May we all come through safe and with honour.’

‘[Lloyd George had a moderately phrased amendment but] soon became animated and even violent. I constructed in succession sentence after sentence to hook on with after he should sit down.…Then Mr. Bowles whispered “You might say ‘instead of making his violent speech without moving his moderate amendment, he had better have moved his moderate amendment without making his violent speech.’” Manna in the wilderness was not more welcome!.…I was up before I knew it, and reciting Tommy Bowles’s rescuing sentence. It won a general cheer.…Everyone was very kind. The usual restoratives were applied, and I sat in a comfortable coma till I was strong enough to go home.’