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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

5. “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

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

9. “Never ever give up.”

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

11. “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

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

15. “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

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

18. “Safari, so goody.”

— Winston S. Churchill

19. “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

20. “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

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

— Winston S. Churchill

22. “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

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

27. “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

28. “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

29. “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

30. “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

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

— Winston S. Churchill

32. “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

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

35. “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

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

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

— Winston S. Churchill

40. “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

41. “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

42. “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

43. “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

44. “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

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

— Winston S. Churchill

46. “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

47. “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

48. “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

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. “A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.”

— Winston S. Churchill