Link Copied!
Winston Churchill Quotes (1874-1965)
Writer, Painter, Politician
-100px.jpg)
-100px.jpg)
-100px.jpg)
-100px.png)
-100px.png)
-100px.jpg)
About Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill KG OM CH TD FRS PC (November 30, 1874 – January 24, 1965) was a British statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was a Sandhurst-educated soldier, a Nobel Prize-winning writer and historian, a prolific painter, and one of the longest-serving politicians in British history. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955, though he was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.
Best Winston Churchill Quotes
Shortest
Earliest
Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Winston Churchill quotes.
Violet Bonham-Carter's recollection paints Churchill as a man capable of profound self-deprecation, yet ultimately confident in his unique brilliance, as evidenced by this striking metaphor.
“We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glow-worm.”
- Winston Churchill, Post-war years
“I hate nobody except Hitler — and that is professional.”
- Winston Churchill, The Second World War
“The price of greatness is responsibility.”
- Winston Churchill, The Second World War
“One might as well legalise sodomy as recognise the Bolsheviks.”
- Winston Churchill, Early career
“Fascism and Communism... Polar opposites—no, polar the same!"”
- Winston Churchill, The 1930s)
“The object of Parliament is to substitute argument for fisticuffs.”
- Winston Churchill, Post-war years
Winston Churchill Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of Winston Churchill quotes by topic.
Winston Churchill on World War II 9 quotes
View all 9 quotes on World War II →Winston Churchill on English Civil War 9 quotes
“The Story of the Second English Civil War is short and simple. King, Lords and Commons, landlords, merchants, the City and the countryside, bishops and presbyters, the Scottish army, the Welsh people, and the English Fleet, all now turned against the New Model Army. The Army beat the lot.”
Winston Churchill on World War I 7 quotes
Amidst World War I's early stages, Winston Churchill argued that American casualties would be key to gaining U.S. support for the Allied cause.
“Nothing will bring American sympathy along with us so much as American blood shed in the field.”
Winston Churchill on United Kingdom 5 quotes
Speaking to the US Congress in 1952, Churchill humorously contrasted the flexible leadership of British parties with the steadfast unity of the nation.
“British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails.”
- Winston Churchill, 20th century)
Winston Churchill on United Kingdom–United States relations 5 quotes
Amidst the shared anxieties of World War II, Churchill's 1941 address to Congress envisioned a lasting, majestic alliance between Britain and America founded on justice and peace.
“''''It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.'''”
Winston Churchill on War 4 quotes
Though the exact phrasing is debated, Winston Churchill's sentiment, advocating dialogue over conflict during a 1954 White House luncheon, resonated deeply and was widely reported.
“To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”
Winston Churchill on Nuclear weapons 4 quotes
“The atomic bomb is the Second Coming in Wrath.”
- Winston Churchill, 1940s)
Winston Churchill on England 4 quotes
“I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”
- Winston Churchill, 20th century)
Winston Churchill on Marching 4 quotes
English Translation: "Long live France! Long live also the forward march of the common people in all the lands towards their just and true inheritance, and towards the broader and fuller age."
Original (French/English): "Vive la France! Long live also the forward march of the common people in all the lands towards their just and true inheritance, and towards the broader and fuller age."
“Vive la France! Long live also the forward march of the common people in all the lands towards their just and true inheritance, and towards the broader and fuller age.”
Original (French/English): "Vive la France! Long live also the forward march of the common people in all the lands towards their just and true inheritance, and towards the broader and fuller age."
Winston Churchill on Fascism 4 quotes
“It [fascism] is not a sign-post which would direct us here, for I firmly believe that our long experienced democracy will be able to preserve a parliamentary system of government with whatever modifications may be necessary from both extremes of arbitrary rule.”
Winston Churchill on Spanish Civil War 4 quotes
Written in 1936, Churchill privately warned the French Ambassador that aligning against communism with Germany and Italy would dangerously isolate France and embolden fascist powers.
“One of the greatest difficulties I meet with in trying to hold on to the old position is the German talk that the anti-communist countries should stand together. I am sure if France sent airplanes, etc. to the present Madrid Government, and the Germans and Italians pushed in from the other angle, the dominant forces here would be pleased with Germany and Italy, and estranged from France. I hope you will not mind my writing this, which I do, of course, entirely on my own account. I do not like to hear people talking of England, Germany, and Italy teaming up against European Communism. It is too easy to be good. I am sure that an absolutely rigid neutrality, with the strongest protest against any breach of it, is the only correct and safe course at the present time. A day may come, if there is a stalemate, when the League of Nations may intervene to wind up the horrors. But even that is very doubtful.”
Winston Churchill on Future 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Future →What Winston Churchill Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Winston Churchill shared regarding contemporaries.
Winston Churchill on Ramsay MacDonald 9 quotes
“What is the Prime Minister going to do? I spoke the other day, after he had been defeated in an important division about his wonderful skill in falling without hurting himself. He falls, but up he comes again, smiling, a little dishevelled but still smiling. But this is a juncture, a situation, which will try to the fullest the peculiar arts in which he excites. I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's Circus which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the programme which I most admired to see was the one described as "The Boneless Wonder". My parents judged that that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing for my youthful eyes, and I have waited fifty years to see the boneless wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.”
Winston Churchill on Adolf Hitler 8 quotes
Facing the looming threat of Nazi Germany in 1941, Winston Churchill quipped about his willingness to even ally with the devil to defeat Hitler.
“If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”
Winston Churchill on Stanley Baldwin 7 quotes
“Baldwin, Stanley … confesses putting party before country, 169-70; ...”
Winston Churchill on Oliver Cromwell 6 quotes
“By the end of 1648 it was all over. Cromwell was Dictator. The Royalists were crushed; Parliament was a tool; the Constitution was a figment; the Scots were rebuffed, the Welsh back in their mountains; the Fleet was reorganized, London overawed. King Charles, at Carisbrooke Castle, where the donkey treads the water wheel, was left to pay the bill. It was mortal.”
Winston Churchill on Charles I of England 5 quotes
“By the end of 1648 it was all over. Cromwell was Dictator. The Royalists were crushed; Parliament was a tool; the Constitution was a figment; the Scots were rebuffed, the Welsh back in their mountains; the Fleet was reorganized, London overawed. King Charles, at Carisbrooke Castle, where the donkey treads the water wheel, was left to pay the bill. It was mortal.”
Winston Churchill on Lord Randolph Churchill 5 quotes
“From the moment Lord Randolph Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer responsible in large measure for the affairs of the nation, he ceased in vital matters to be a Tory. He adopted with increasing zest the Gladstonian outlook, with the single exception of Irish Home Rule; and in all social and labour questions he was far beyond what the Whig or middle-class Liberal of that epoch could have tolerated.”
Winston Churchill on James II of England 5 quotes
“During the whole of 1686 and 1687 James held Parliament in abeyance, and used his dispensing power to introduce Roman Catholics into key positions. Whigs and Tories drew closer together. James was uniting the party that had challenged his brother with the party that had rallied so ardently his brother's defence. He now embarked on a political maneoevre at once audacious, crafty, and miscalculated. Hitherto he had striven only to relieve his Catholic subjects. If Whigs and Tories were combined he would match them by a coalition of Papists and Nonconformists under the armed power of the Crown. In William Penn, the Quaker courtier and founder of the state of Pennsylvania across the seas, influential in both this and the former reign, he found a powerful and skilled agent. Thus did the King break down the national barriers of his throne and try to shore it up with novel, ill-assorted, and inadequate props.”
Winston Churchill on Neville Chamberlain 4 quotes
“During these long violent months of war we had come closer together than at any time in our twenty years of friendly relationship amid the ups and downs of politics. I greatly admired his fortitude and firmness of spirit. I felt when I served under him that he would never give in: and I knew when our positions were reversed that I could count upon the aid of a loyal and unflinching comrade.”
Winston Churchill on Andrew Jackson 4 quotes
“The union of Western and Southern politicians had had their revenge upon the North. The Radicalism of the frontier had won a great political contest. Jackson’s occupation of the Presidency had finally broken the “era of good feelings” which had followed the war with Britain, and by his economic policy he had split the old Republican Party of Jefferson. The Radicalism of the West was looked upon with widespread suspicion throughout the Eastern states, and Jackson’s official appointments had not been very happy. The election in 1836 of Jackson’s lieutenant, Van Buren, meant the continuation of Jacksonian policy, while the old General himself returned in triumph to. his retirement in Tennessee. The first incursions of the West into high politics had revealed the slumbering forces of democracy on the frontier and shown the inexperience of their leaders in such affairs.”
Winston Churchill on George C. Marshall 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on George C. Marshall →Winston Churchill on Stafford Cripps 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Stafford Cripps →Winston Churchill on Philippe Pétain 3 quotes
“Pétain has always been an anti-British defeatist, and is now a dotard.”
Quotes About Winston Churchill
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Winston Churchill from others.
Paul Addison on Winston Churchill 2 quotes
“Having...announced his "Four Years Plan", Churchill was sincere enough in his commitment to social reform. If a Churchill Government had been elected in 1945 some form of National Health Service would have been introduced, along with comprehensive social insurance and policies to maintain full employment.”
Margaret Atwood on Winston Churchill
“Political pundits have a saying that a great leader needs three things: brains, heart, and guts, or its modern variant, balls. Churchill, for example, had all three. Now start doing your own sums: FDR surely had all three; Nixon had brains and guts, but not much heart. Reagan had a good facsimile of a heart, but not much of a brain...”
Lord Alanbrooke on Winston Churchill
“I can say here and now, with no hesitation whatever, that if it had not been for him this nation would not have survived the year 1940, and would not have steeled itself to meet its tasks in the years afterwards.”
Lord Altrincham on Winston Churchill
“[T]he splendid leadership he gave this country and the Commonwealth from the moment he became Prime Minister in the Second World War—a leadership which not only saved the freedom and genius of Europe's most civilised peoples from eclipse, but also carried Britain triumphant with no more than a third of her former sacrifice of life through a Second World War half as long again as the First... Not one, in fact, of the great Englishmen who have possessed the priceless combination of political and military sense...has surpassed Churchill in the distinctive genius for statesmanship in peace and war on which the greatness of this little island has been built, namely, an infallible instinct for the balance of power indispensable to its security, alertness to any threatened disturbance of that balance however far ahead, and imaginative resource, when the balance has been disturbed, in righting it by the most effective and economical use of our always inadequate strength. It is due, I repeat, to this, the dominant element in his genius, that Western Europe is not at this moment a dependency of either Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.”
Leo Amery on Winston Churchill
“[The War] at once raised issues which transcended all party divisions and, obliterating all the questions of the passing hour, linked up the England of to-day with the England that fought the Spanish Armada, that humbled Louis XIV and wore down Napoleon. In that new, that eternal England, he by natural right came into his own. He is to-day the spirit of old England incarnate, with its unshakeable self-confidence, its grim gaiety, its unfailing sense of humour, its underlying moral earnestness, its unflinching tenacity. Against that inner unity of spirit between leader and nation the ill-cemented moral fabric of Hitler's perversion of the German soul must be shattered in the end.”
William Anderson on Winston Churchill
“We have at this moment a much better atmosphere, in which there is far less industrial tension than there was sometime back... I hold no brief for the present Minister of Munitions [Winston Churchill]. I believe he has his personal and political detractors—I am not concerned with them one way or the other—but in my opinion he has brought courage and a certain quality of imagination to the task of dealing with labour questions since he became Minister of Munitions. Because of that, the situation has perceptibly improved, and I hope he will go on in the same direction.”
Anonymous on Winston Churchill
“The world depends on the United States to shape history. No person recognized this fact better than Winston Churchill, whose nation depended on American intervention in the Second World War. At the time, he wrote, "How heavily do the destinies of this generation hang upon the government and people of the United States... Will the United States throw their weight into the scales of peace and law and freedom while time remains, or will they remain spectators until the disaster has occurred; and then, with infinite cost and labor, build up what need not have been cast down?"”
H. H. Asquith on Winston Churchill
The Marquis of Landsdowne's witty observation highlights Macaulay's perceived overconfidence and unwavering certainty in his sweeping historical pronouncements, a sentiment shared by many readers.
“I wish I knew as much about anything as that young man knows about everything.”
Clement Attlee on Winston Churchill 2 quotes
“It must be a melancholy satisfaction to see how right you were... Let's hope it's not too late.”
Stanley Baldwin on Winston Churchill
“One of these days I'll make a few casual remarks about Winston. Not a speech—no oratory—just a few words in passing. I've got it all ready. I am going to say that when Winston was born lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle gifts—imagination, eloquence, industry, ability, and then came a fairy who said "No one person has a right to so many gifts", picked him up and gave him such a shake and twist that with all these gifts he was denied judgment and wisdom. And that is why while we delight to listen to him in this House, we do not take his advice.”
Dave Barry on Winston Churchill
“Stalin's strategy at the end of World War II was to acquire a small "buffer zone between Russia and Germany, consisting of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, and most of Germany. In an effort to garner public support in these nations, Stalin mounted a public-relations campaign around the upbeat theme "Maybe We Won't Have Your Whole Family Shot," and in 1945 Eastern Europe decided to join the Communist bloc by a vote of 28,932,084,164,504,029-0. Heartened by this mandate, Stalin immediately ordered construction work to begin on the Iron Curtain, which was given its name by Sir Winston Churchill, who, in a historic anecdote at a dinner party, said, "Madam, I may be drunk, but an iron curtain has descended upon BLEAAARRRGGGHHH."”
David Ben-Gurion on Winston Churchill
“Right away Churchill jumped up and said: Our entire tragedy is that we have a weak government. The Baldwins are idiots, totally lacking in talent, etc. If England is to be dependent on them, she is lost. They are concerned only with deposing and crowning kings, while Germany is arming and growing stronger, and we are slipping lower and lower. But this situation will not last long. England will wake up and defeat Mussolini and Hitler, and then your hour will also come.”
Disputed Quotes
Quotes attributed to Winston Churchill that are questionable.
“America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these 'isms' wouldn't today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government — and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives.”
“You are a small exclamation mark at the end of a very long and insignificant sentence in the book of history.”
“Bessie Braddock: Winston, you are drunk, and what's more you are disgustingly drunk.
Churchill: Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and, what's more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly.”
Churchill: Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and, what's more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly.”
“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. Most people, sometime in their lives, stumble across truth. Most jump up, brush themselves off, and hurry on about their business, as if nothing happened.”
“Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is the key to unlocking our potential.”
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”
“Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind.”
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to Winston Churchill
“Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues and freebooters. All Indian leaders will be of low calibre and men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles.”
“If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.”
“The fascists of the future will be called anti-fascists.”
“Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.”
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
“I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.”
“The idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the cruelest delusions which has befuddled the human mind.”
“Lady Nancy Astor: If I were your wife I'd put poison in your coffee.
Churchill: If I were your husband I'd drink it.”
Churchill: If I were your husband I'd drink it.”
“George Bernard Shaw is said to have told W.S.C.:
Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.
W.S.C. to G.B.S.:
Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.”
Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.
W.S.C. to G.B.S.:
Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.”
“Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing — After Exhausting All the Alternatives.”
“Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions”
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter”
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”
“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results”
“Germany's unforgivable crime before WW2 was its attempt to loosen its economy out of the world trade system and to build up an own exchange system from which the world-finance couldn't profit anymore.”
“We have slaughtered the wrong pig.”
About Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill KG OM CH TD FRS PC (November 30, 1874 – January 24, 1965) was a British statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was a Sandhurst-educated soldier, a Nobel Prize-winning writer and historian, a prolific painter, and one of the longest-serving politicians in British history. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955, though he was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.