Last Updated: July 3, 2023 by Quote.cc Team
Sir Winston Churchill is one of the most widely revered and iconic leaders in world history who was renowned as much for his wit and wisdom as for his brave and clear-sighted leadership. He served as Britain’s Prime Minister when the Second World War broke out. His speeches during the war conveyed strength and courage to the population of Great Britain in the face of adversity, and with his candor and wit, he gained much favor among the British people. And his oratory skills held the nation together during that terrifying period in history.
Here are our 170 Winston Churchill Quotes to Inspire You to Never Surrender. These wise words are still as significant today as they were more than half a century ago.
Here are 170 Sir Winston Churchill Quotes to Live By.
Top 10 Winston Churchill Quotes
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchil
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchil
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” – Winston Churchil
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchil
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchil
“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” – Winston Churchil
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” – Winston Churchil
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” – Winston Churchil
“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” – Winston Churchil
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” – Winston Churchil
Famous Winston Churchill Quotes
“I am easily satisfied with the very best.” – Winston Churchil
“When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.” – Winston Churchil
“Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.” – Winston Churchil
“Politics is more dangerous than war, for, in war, you are only killed once.” – Winston Churchil
“I have in my life concentrated more on self-expression than self-denial.” – Winston Churchil
“Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.” – Winston Churchil
“Broadly speaking short words are best and the old words when short, are best of all.” – Winston Churchil
“I never ‘worry’ about action, but only about inaction.” – Winston Churchil
“To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.” – Winston Churchil
“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” – Winston Churchil
“Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.” – Winston Churchil
“Every man should ask himself each day whether he is not too readily accepting negative solutions.” – Winston Churchil
“We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.” – Winston Churchil
“No crime is so great as daring to excel.” – Winston Churchil
“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” – Winston Churchil
“We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.” – Winston Churchil
“Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.” – Winston Churchil
“Everyone has his day, and some days last longer than others.” – Winston Churchil
“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. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth.” – Winston Churchil
“It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.” – Winston Churchil
“I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.” – Winston Churchil
“Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.” – Winston Churchil
“There is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.” – Winston Churchil
“If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.” – Winston Churchil
“In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound, and everything sound is disagreeable.” – Winston Churchil
“One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.” – Winston Churchil
“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” – Winston Churchil
“We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.” – Winston Churchil
“You have enemies? Good. It means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchil
“My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.” – Winston Churchil
“Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.” – Winston Churchil
“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” – Winston Churchil
“The true guide of life is to do what is right.” – Winston Churchil
“There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.” – Winston Churchil
“I never worry about action, but only inaction.” – Winston Churchil
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” – Winston Churchil
“Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.” – Winston Churchil
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” – Winston Churchil
“My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.” – Winston Churchil
“If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.” – Winston Churchil
“Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.” – Winston Churchil
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchil
“Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.” – Winston Churchil
“Things are not always right because they are hard, but if they are right, one must not mind if they are also hard.” – Winston Churchil
“Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.” – Winston Churchil
“To be really happy and safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real.” – Winston Churchil
“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.” – Winston Churchil
“There is always much to be said for not attempting more than you can do and for making a certainty of what you try. But this principle, like others in life and war, has its exceptions.” – Winston Churchil
“The first duty of the university is to teach wisdom, not a trade; character, not technicalities. We want a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of engineers.” – Winston Churchil
“Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn’t happen.” – Winston Churchil
Inspirational Winston Churchill Quotes
“There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right.” – Winston Churchil
“Nourish your hopes, but do not overlook realities.” – Winston Churchil
“I have never accepted what many people have kindly said, namely that I have inspired the nation. It was the nation and the race dwelling all around the globe that had the lionheart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.” – Winston Churchil
“One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!” – Winston Churchil
“For myself, I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.” – Winston Churchil
“The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.” – Winston Churchil
“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honour; duty; mercy; hope.” – Winston Churchil
“You create your own universe as you go along.” – Winston Churchil
“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.” – Winston Churchil
“I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.” – Winston Churchil
Funny Winston Churchill Quotes
“The most important thing about education is appetite.” – Winston Churchil
“The English never draw a line without blurring it.” – Winston Churchil
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for.” – Winston Churchil
“Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.” – Winston Churchil
“You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.” – Winston Churchil
“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress; then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.” – Winston Churchil
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” – Winston Churchil
“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.” – Winston Churchil
“This paper, by its very length, defends itself from ever being read.” – Winston Churchil
“I like things to happen, and if they don’t happen, I like to make them happen.” – Winston Churchil
“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.” – Winston Churchil
“The English know how to make the best of things. Their so-called muddling through simply skills at dealing with the inevitable.” – Winston Churchil
“We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow-worm.” – Winston Churchil
“All I can say is that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” – Winston Churchil
“The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.” – Winston Churchil
“I may be drunk, miss, but in the morning, I will be sober, and you will still be ugly.” – Winston Churchil
“One always measures friendships by how they show up in bad weather.” – Winston Churchil
“I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” – Winston Churchil
“There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.” – Winston Churchil
“Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.” – Winston Churchil
“I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.” – Winston Churchil
“When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.” – Winston Churchil
Winston Churchill Quotes Success
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchil
“You must put your head into the lion’s mouth if the performance is to be a success.” – Winston Churchil
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchil
“It is no use saying ‘we are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.” – Winston Churchil
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchil
“No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.” – Winston Churchil
“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchil
“It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes, we must do what is required.” – Winston Churchil
“It is wonderful what great strides can be made when there is a resolute purpose behind them.” – Winston Churchil
“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.” – Winston Churchil
Winston Churchill Quotes WW2
“War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.” – Winston Churchil
“In war, as in life, it is often necessary, when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.” – Winston Churchil
“In wartime, truth is so precious that a bodyguard of lies should always attend her.” – Winston Churchil
“Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is the allotted span for all we must cram into it!” – Winston Churchil
“Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.” – Winston Churchil
“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the hard may be; for without victory, there is no survival.” – Winston Churchil
“I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over, I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.” – Winston Churchil
“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.” – Winston Churchil
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” – Winston Churchil
“What is our policy? … to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.” – Winston Churchil
“We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.” – Winston Churchil
“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 the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” – Winston Churchil
“Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts … genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation … the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality …though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries.” – Winston Churchil
Winston Churchill Quotes Never Give Up
“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” – Winston Churchil
“We shall not fail or falter. We shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.” – Winston Churchil
“Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about.” – Winston Churchil
“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.” – Winston Churchil
“Wars are not won by evacuations.” – Winston Churchil
“Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” – Winston Churchil
“Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.” – Winston Churchil
“It’s Never Over ’till it’s over! Never Give Up! Never.” – Winston Churchil
“Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” – Winston Churchil
Winston Churchill Quotes Darkest Hour
“Do not let us speak of darker days; let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived. ” – Winston Churchil
“Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: “This was their finest hour.” – Winston Churchil
“No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.” – Winston Churchil
“To each, there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.” – Winston Churchil
“I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget… we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat… All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness… We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that… Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.” – Winston Churchil
“I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which lead to a dark gulf.” – Winston Churchil
“The lights of Saxon England were going out, and in the gathering darkness a gentle, grey-beard prophet foretold the end. When on his death-bed Edward spoke of a time of evil that was coming upon the land his inspired mutterings struck terror into the hearers.” – Winston Churchil
Winston Churchill Quotes On Liberal
“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 else says anything back, that is an outrage.” – Winston Churchil
“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is 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.” – Winston Churchil
“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 Churchil
Winston Churchill Quotes On Leadership
“I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.” – Winston Churchil
“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” – Winston Churchil
“Give us the tools, and we will finish the job” – Winston Churchil
“There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away.” – Winston Churchil
“The price of greatness is responsibility.” – Winston Churchil
“Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.” – Winston Churchil
“Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.” – Winston Churchil
“The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground.” – Winston Churchil
“Never does a man portray his character more vividly than when proclaiming the character of another.” – Winston Churchil
“I let the argument rip healthily between the departments. This is a very good way to finding out the truth.” – Winston Churchil
“There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right. That is the only way to deserve and to win the confidence of our great people in these days of trouble.” – Winston Churchil
“I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.” – Winston Churchil
“Hasty work and premature decisions may lead to penalties out of all proportion to the issues immediately involved.” – Winston Churchil
Winston Churchill Quotes On Courage
“Without courage, all other virtues lose their meaning.” – Winston Churchil
“Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.” – Winston Churchil
“Success is never found. Failure is never fatal. Courage is the only thing.” – Winston Churchil
“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.” – Winston Churchil
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; it’s also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchil
Winston Churchill Quotes On History
“Study history, study history. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft.” – Winston Churchil
“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” – Winston Churchil
“History is written by the victors.” – Winston Churchil
“The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are often no longer strong.” – Winston Churchil
“If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future. ” – Winston Churchil
“Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable?” – Winston Churchil
“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 myself.” – Winston Churchil
“History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.” – Winston Churchil
“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’” – Winston Churchil
“Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.” – Winston Churchil
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” – Winston Churchil