Winston Churchill

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

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, ‘Verify your quotations.’

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.

Haven’t you learned yet that I put something more than whisky into my speeches.

He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Necessity, who is the mother of invention.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Life consists in what a person is thinking of all day.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.

Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.