Top 120 Winston S. Churchill Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Those who never change their minds, never change anything.”

— Winston S. Churchill

2. “Sure I am this day we are masters of our fate, that the task which has been set before us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us.”

— Winston S. Churchill

3. “To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.”

— Winston S. Churchill

4. “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight on the seas and oceans, 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 S. Churchill

5. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

— Winston S. Churchill

6. “The optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.”

— Winston S. Churchill

7. “I could not live without Champagne. In victory I deserve it. In defeat I need it.”

— Winston S. Churchill

8. “Never ever give up.”

— Winston S. Churchill

9. “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

— Winston S. Churchill

10. “He’s a humble man with much to be humble about.”

— Winston S. Churchill

11. “A nation that forgets its past has no future.”

— Winston S. Churchill

12. “The longer you look back, the farther you can look forward.”

— Winston S. Churchill

13. “If Independence is granted to India, power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, 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. A day would come when even air and water would be taxed in India.”

— Winston S. Churchill

14. “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”

— Winston S. Churchill

15. “I am a man of simple tastes easily satisfied with the best.”

— Winston S. Churchill

16. “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

— Winston S. Churchill

17. “Kremlin political intrigues are comparable to a bulldog fight under a rug. An outsider only hears the growling, and when he sees the bones fly out from beneath it is obvious who won.”

— Winston S. Churchill

18. “We have not journeyed all this way because we are made of sugar candy.”

— Winston S. Churchill

19. “Safari, so goody.”

— Winston S. Churchill

20. “Anyone who was not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, while anyone who was still a liberal at 40 had no head.”

— Winston S. Churchill

21. “When you’re 20 you care what everyone thinks. When you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks. When you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.”

— Winston S. Churchill

22. “Withhold no sacrifice, grudge no toil, seek no sordid gain, fear no foe. All will be well.”15.”

— Winston S. Churchill

23. “A society is measured by the treatment of its prisoners.”

— Winston S. Churchill

24. “When Marshal Foch heard of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles he observed with singular accuracy: “This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.”

— Winston S. Churchill

25. “Those whose work and pleasure are one... are... Fortune’s favoured children.”

— Winston S. Churchill

26. “Virtuous motives, trammelled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness.”

— Winston S. Churchill

27. “Democracy is more vindictive than cabinets, the wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.”

— Winston S. Churchill

28. “First we shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us.”

— Winston S. Churchill

29. “We shall not flag or fail. 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 S. Churchill

30. “All this shows how much luck there is in human affairs, and how little we should worry about anything except doing our best.”

— Winston S. Churchill

31. “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 S. Churchill

32. “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.”

— Winston S. Churchill

33. “Of this I am certain, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”

— Winston S. Churchill

34. “Around Whitehall, a sacking from Churchill was known as the ’awarding of the Order of the Boot.”

— Winston S. Churchill

35. “Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.”

— Winston S. Churchill

36. “I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat.”

— Winston S. Churchill

37. “Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.”

— Winston S. Churchill

38. “I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.”

— Winston S. Churchill

39. “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 S. Churchill

40. “As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism.”

— Winston S. Churchill

41. “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”

— Winston S. Churchill

42. “Time after time, history ran over the luddites and romanticists, those who sought to restore the old and delay the new. And every time, history did it with faster, more reliable and more advanced vehicles.”

— Winston S. Churchill

43. “If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”

— Winston S. Churchill

44. “I have adhered to my rule of never criticising any measure of war or policy after the event unless I had before expressed publicly or formally my opinion or warning about it.”

— Winston S. Churchill

45. “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 S. Churchill

46. “Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities... 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 even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth. She has lived and thrived only by repeated subjugations.”

— Winston S. Churchill

47. “In contrast to this, it is not in our interest to abandon Constantinople to Russia and Bulgaria to Bolshevism. But even here it should be possible, with good intentions, to reach a solution which will avoid the worst and facilitate what we want. It will be easier to find a solution if Moscow is clear that nothing obliges us to accept an arrangement which is not satisfactory to us.”

— Winston S. Churchill

48. “Cromwell’s imperious words to the Long Parliament: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

— Winston S. Churchill

49. “Battles are the principal milestones in secular history. Modern opinion resents this uninspiring truth, and historians often treat the decisions of the field as incidents in the dramas of politics and diplomacy. But great battles, won or lost, change the entire course of events, create new standards of values, new moods, new atmospheres, in armies and in nations, to which all must conform.”

— Winston S. Churchill

50. “Enemy submarines are to be called U-Boats. The term submarine is to be reserved for Allied under water vessels. U-Boats are those dastardly villains who sink our ships, while submarines are those gallant and noble craft which sink theirs.”

— Winston S. Churchill