Winston Churchill
(page 3)

Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.

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.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

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.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.

When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.

It is easy for an individual to move through those insensible gradations from left to right, but the act of crossing the Floor is one which requires serious attention. I am well informed on this matter for I have accomplished that difficult process, not only once, but twice.

Of course, when you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.