Top 500 Winston Churchill Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow.”

— Winston Churchill

302. “Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable?”

— Winston Churchill

303. “If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea.”

— Winston Churchill

304. “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 Churchill

305. “Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.”

— Winston Churchill

306. “Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.”

— Winston Churchill

307. “Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valor, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar.”

— Winston Churchill

308. “Every man should ask himself each day whether he is not too readily accepting negative solutions.”

— Winston Churchill

309. “It is wonderful what great strides can be made when there is a resolute purpose behind them.”

— Winston Churchill

310. “Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

— Winston Churchill

311. “Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.”

— Winston Churchill

312. “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”

— Winston Churchill

Featured in: Not Giving Up Quotes

313. “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 Churchill

314. “Watch your character for your character is your destiny.”

— Winston Churchill

315. “I have benefited greatly from criticism, and at no time have I suffered a lack thereof.”

— Winston Churchill

316. “There is not much collective security in a flock of sheep on the way to the butcher.”

— Winston Churchill

317. “Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.”

— Winston Churchill

318. “The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there’s no limit to the power it can generate.”

— Winston Churchill

319. “I drink a great deal. I sleep a little, and I smoke cigar after cigar. That is why I am in two-hundred-percent form.”

— Winston Churchill

320. “The monarchy is so extraordinarily useful. When Britain wins a battle she shouts, “God save the Queen”; when she loses, she votes down the prime minister.”

— Winston Churchill

321. “Russian may seem narrow-minded, impudent, or even stupid people, but can only pray for those who are against them.”

— Winston Churchill

322. “At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper-no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point.”

— Winston Churchill

323. “Anyone who is not a liberal in his youth has no heart. Anyone who remains so as he matures has no brain!”

— Winston Churchill

324. “Safety and certainty in oil lie in variety, and variety alone.”

— Winston Churchill

325. “A polo handicap is a persons ticket to the world.”

— Winston Churchill

326. “I am your servant. You have the right to dismiss me when you please. What you have no right to do is ask me to bear responsibility without the power of action.”

— Winston Churchill

327. “Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer, never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. 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 events.”

— Winston Churchill

328. “An extra yawn one morning in the springtime, an extra snooze one night in the autumn is all that we ask in return for dazzling gifts. We borrow an hour one night in April; we pay it back with golden interest five months later.”

— Winston Churchill

329. “The substitution of the internal combustion engine for the horse marked a very gloomy milestone in the progress of mankind.”

— Winston Churchill

330. “What a fool I have been!”

— Winston Churchill

331. “A communist is like a crocodile: when it opens its mouth you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile or preparing to eat you up.”

— Winston Churchill

332. “I feel like an aeroplane at the end of its flight, in the dusk, with the petrol running out, in search of a safe landing.”

— Winston Churchill

333. “Are you insinuating that I am a purveyor of terminological inexactitudes?”

— Winston Churchill

334. “Any idiot can see something wrong. But can you see what is right?”

— Winston Churchill

335. “The head cannot take in more than the seat can endure.”

— Winston Churchill

336. “Two nations divided by a common language.”

— Winston Churchill

337. “Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.”

— Winston Churchill

338. “I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.”

— Winston Churchill

339. “Socialism is like a dream. Sooner or later you wake up to reality.”

— Winston Churchill

340. “If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.”

— Winston Churchill

341. “There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.”

— Winston Churchill

342. “We are plunged in a long and grievous struggle. But all will come right if we all work together to the end.”

— Winston Churchill

343. “Without execution, thinking is mere idleness.”

— Winston Churchill

344. “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”

— Winston Churchill

345. “Even fools are right sometimes.”

— Winston Churchill

346. “We must build a kind of United States of Europe.”

— Winston Churchill

347. “When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.”

— Winston Churchill

348. “It is a curious fact about British Islanders, who hate drill and have not been invaded for nearly a thousand years, that as danger comes nearer and grows they become progressively less nervous; when it is imminent the are fierce, when it is mortal they are fearless.”

— Winston Churchill

349. “I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.”

— Winston Churchill

350. “If you put two economists xin a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.”

— Winston Churchill