Famous Quotes - Sir Winston Churchill on World War I / WWII

Mr. Sedivy's
History Classes:

More Features:

Highlands Ranch High School - Mr. Sedivy
Highlands Ranch, Colorado

Modern European History

- Famous Quotes Throughout World History -
Sir Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Churchill 1874 - 1965

February 1906
"It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude."

December 20, 1912
"He (Lord Charles Beresford) is one of those orators of whom it was well said. 'Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying; and when they have sat down, they do not know what they have said.'"

November 9, 1914
"Business carried on as usual during alterations on the map of Europe."

February 16, 1922
"The whole map of Europe has been changed ... but as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again."

January 28, 1931
"I have waited 50 years to see the boneless wonder (Ramsay Macdonald) sitting on the Treasury Bench."

November 12, 1936
"(The government) go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity."

October 1, 1939
"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

May 13, 1940
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

May 13, 1940
"What is our policy? ... to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime."

Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt

June 4, 1940
"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."

June 18, 1940
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

August 20, 1940 - On the Battle of Britain
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

February 9, 1941 - Addressing President Roosevelt
"Give us the tools and we will finish the job."

December 30, 1941 - Addressing the Canadian Parliament
"When I warned them (the French Government) that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, 'In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.' Some chicken! Some neck! "

November 10, 1942 - On the Battle of Egypt
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Churchill

November 11, 1942
"We make this wide encircling movement in the Mediterranean, having for its primary object the recovery of the command of that vital sea, but also having for its object the exposure of the underbelly of the Axis, especially Italy, to heavy attack."
(Often misquoted as: "the soft under-belly of the Axis")

March 2, 1943
"National compulsory insurance for all classes for all purposes from the cradle to the grave."

March 21, 1943
"There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies."

Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin

March 5, 1946
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."
('Iron curtain' previously had been applied by others to the Soviet Union or her sphere of influence, e.g. Ethel Snowden in 1920, Dr Goebbels in 1945, and by Churchill himself in a cable to President Truman on June 4, 1945.)

November 11, 1947
"Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

June 26, 1954
"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

"In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill." (Later attributed)

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

"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me." (Later attributed)

- Famous Quotes Throughout World History -

Highlands Ranch High School 9375 South Cresthill Lane Highlands Ranch, Colorado 80126 303-471-7000

| Home | Back to top of page | Site Contents |