Winston Churchill

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

I am most anxious that in dealing with matters which every Member knows are extremely delicate matters, I should not use any phrase or expression which would cause offence to our friends and Allies on the Continent or across the Atlantic Ocean.

Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.

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

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Do that which is assigned to you and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society, for nothing suffocates the promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference.

You can tell a lot about a person by listening to the way they talk about someone they once loved.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.

He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

We mustn’t be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.