Top 100 Winston Churchill War Sayings
#2. The siesta provides a delightful detour from the working day and it also has a practical value as far as productivity is concerned. Winston Churchill had a good long siesta every day during the Second World War, and he said it was the thing that enabled him to cope with the pressure.
Tom Hodgkinson
#3. [Much] as war attracts me and fascinates my mind with its tremendous situations, I feel more deeply every year ... what vile and wicked folly and barbarism it all is.
Winston Churchill
#4. The old wars were decided by their episodes rather than by their tendencies. In this war, the tendencies are far more important than the episodes.
Winston Churchill
#5. Now at last the slowly gathered, long-pent-up fury of the storm broke upon us. Four or five millions of men met each other in the first shock of the most merciless of all the wars of which record has been kept.
Winston Churchill
#6. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.
Winston S. Churchill
#7. Indeed I do not think we should be justified in using any but the more sombre tones and colours while our people, our Empire, and indeed the whole English-speaking world are passing through a dark and deadly valley.
Winston Churchill
#8. I wanted us to go to the Tories when we were strong ... not in misfortune to be made an honest woman of.
Winston Churchill
#9. The tank was originally invented to clear a way for the infantry in the teeth of machine-gun fire. Now it is the infantry who will have to clear a way for the tanks.
Winston Churchill
#11. In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
Winston S. Churchill
#12. I do not suppose that at any moment of history has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. Tonight the sun goes down on more suffering than ever before in the world.
Winston S. Churchill
#13. War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.
Winston S. Churchill
#14. The whole of northern Norway was covered with snow to depths which none of our soldiers had ever seen, felt, or imagined. There were neither snow-shoes nor skis - still less skiers. We must do our best. Thus began this ramshackle campaign.
Winston Churchill
#15. Any clever person can make plans for winning a war if he has no responsibility for carrying them out.
Winston Churchill
#16. The War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of Fate.
Winston S. Churchill
#18. In Hitler's launching of the Nazi campaign on Russia, we can already see, after six months of fighting, that he has made one of the outstanding blunders in history.
Winston Churchill
#20. Have the stresses of war been as bad to you personally as carrying through the policy of Collective Farms?
Winston Churchill
#21. You must understand that this war is not against Hitler or National Socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it is in the hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest.
Winston Churchill
#22. Winston Churchill said 'In war time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies'. Any book called The Truth should therefore have one.
Terry Pratchett
#23. I think Winston Churchill is an appallingly bad politician, and always has been, that he hung onto power long after he should have done, and that his post-war administration was a disaster.
Malcolm Muggeridge
#24. I think that Sir Winston Churchill, in the period that the Germans occupied the Channel Ports, when the whole war hung in issue, fulfilled a role, which is as great as any role in our history.
Malcolm Muggeridge
#26. You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.' - To Neville Chamberlain
Winston S. Churchill
#27. They said it was only a ground shark; but I was not wholly reassured. It is as bad to be eaten by a ground shark as by any other.
Winston S. Churchill
#28. If we could get out of this jam by giving up Malta and Gibraltar and some African colonies I would jump at it. But the only safe way is to convince Hitler that he cannot beat us.
Winston Churchill
#29. There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is far worse or much harder to win.
Winston Churchill
#30. Before America entered the war [WW2] I knew we could not win it, but after she entered I knew we could not lose
Winston Churchill
#32. This is a war of the unknown warriors; but let all strive without failing in faith or in duty, and the dark curse of Hitler will be lifted from our age.
Winston Churchill
#33. Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.
Winston Churchill
#34. The is always much to be said for not attempting more than you can do and for making a certainty of what you try. But this principle, like others in life and war, has it exceptions.
Winston Churchill
#35. My ability to persuade my wife to marry me [was] quite my most brilliant achievement ... Of course, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to have got through what I had to go through in peace and war without the devoted aid of what we call, in England, one's better half.
Winston Churchill
#36. What is our policy? ... to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.
Winston Churchill
#37. We are really doing our very best. There are no doubt many mistakes and shortcomings. A lot of things are done none too well. Some things that ought to be done have not yet been done ... [But Britain's effort has] justly commanded the wonder and admiration of every friendly nation in the world.
Winston Churchill
#38. As a student, I had stayed with Winston Churchill; later, I had lunched with Harold Macmillan - in fact, had met most of the post-war prime ministers of Great Britain from Douglas-Home to Tony Blair.
Nigel Hamilton
#39. The great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation. Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a world of shared prosperity.
Jeffrey Sachs
#40. England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame and will get war.
Winston Churchill
#41. The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending.
Winston Churchill
#42. I have found in my experience of war, that plans are useless, but planning is invaluable.
Winston Churchill
#43. We can see beyond the present shadows of war in the Middle East to a new world order where the strong work together to deter and stop aggression. This was precisely Franklin Roosevelt's and Winston Churchill's vision for peace for the post-war period.
Dick Gephardt
#44. The eagle has ceased to scream, but the parrots will now begin to chatter. The war of the giants is over and the pigmies will now start to squabble.
Winston Churchill
#46. There is more blood than paint upon these hands. All those thousands of men killed. We thought it would be a little job, and so it might have been if it had begun in the right way.
Winston Churchill
#47. One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'.
Winston S. Churchill
#48. The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought.
Winston Churchill
#50. It may well be that we shall by a process of sublime irony have reached a state in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.
Winston Churchill
#51. Singapore could only be taken after a siege by an army of at least 50,000 men. It is not considered possible that the Japanese would embark on such a mad enterprise.
Winston Churchill
#52. The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the means of victory.
Winston Churchill
#53. A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.
Winston S. Churchill
#54. I think that perhaps the classic propagandists of the - in the Second World War was Winston Churchill. He was extremely skilled and adept at it.
Alexander Haig
#55. Before the war it had seemed incredible that such terrors and slaughters, even if they began, could last more than a few months. After the first two years it was difficult to believe that they would ever end.
Winston Churchill
#56. The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars Englandhe should have said Britain, of coursealways wins one battlethe last.
Winston Churchill
#57. More than 80 per cent of the British casualties of the Great War were English. More than 80 per cent of the taxation is paid by the English taxpayers. We are entitled to mention these facts, and to draw authority and courage from them.
Winston Churchill
#58. When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.
Winston Churchill
#60. 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
#61. In time of war, soldiers, however sensible, care a great deal more on some occasions about slaking their thirst than about the danger of enteric fever. Better known as typhoid, the disease is often spread by drinking contaminated water.
Winston Churchill
#62. Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.
Winston Churchill
#63. You have to run risks. There are no certainties in war. There is a precipice on either side of you - a precipice of caution and a precipice of over-daring.
Winston Churchill
#64. It is remarkable that Lord Esher should be so much astray ... We must conclude that an uncontrollable fondness for fiction forbade him to forsake it for fact. Such constancy is a defect in an historian.
Winston Churchill
#65. The pictorial battlefield becomes a sea of mud mercifully veiled by the fog of war.
Winston Churchill
#66. Madness is however an affliction which in war carries with it the advantage of SURPRISE.
Winston S. Churchill
#67. It was evident however that the lawyers would have to have their say ... This also opened up a vista both lengthy and obscure.
Winston Churchill
#68. We sit in calm, airy, silent rooms opening upon sunlit and embowered lawns, not a sound except of summer and of husbandry disturbs the peace; but seven million men, any ten thousand of whom could have annihilated the ancient armies, are in ceaseless battle from the Alps to the Ocean.
Winston Churchill
#69. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.
Winston Churchill
#70. The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war or servitude must be established on solid foundations and must be guarded by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than submit to tyranny.
Winston Churchill
#71. Far be it from me to paint a rosy picture of the future ... But I should be failing in my duty if, on the other side, I were not to convey the true impression, that this great nation is getting into its war stride.
Winston Churchill
#72. Churchill's 2,054 page book "Second World War" makes no mention of genocide or the murder of Jews. Coincidentally, Churchill was a strong proponent of eugenic legislation prior to the outbreak of WWII.
A.E. Samaan
#73. This war proceeds along its terrible path by the slaughter of infantry ... I say to myself every day. What is going on while we sit here, while we go away to dinner or home to bed? Nearly, 1000 - Englishmen, Britishers, and the other is America ... Everything else is swept away.
Winston Churchill
#74. They have destroyed your weapons," he had told the generals, in effect. "But these weapons would in any case have become obsolete before the next war. That war will be fought with brand-new ones, and the army which is least hampered with obsolete material will have a great advantage.
Winston S. Churchill
#75. Good night, then - sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly on all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn.
Winston Churchill
#76. When Winston Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favour of the war effort, he simply asked,'then what are we fighting for?
Kazuo Ishiguro
#77. A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.
Winston S. Churchill
#78. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
Winston S. Churchill
#79. My only consolation for the failure of the Dardanelles was that God wished things to be prolonged in order to sicken mankind of war, and that therefore He had interfered with a project that would have brought the war to a speedier conclusion.
Winston Churchill
#80. Science unfolded her treasures and her secrets to the desperate demands of men, and placed in their hands agencies and apparatus almost decisive in their character. Reflecting on the outcome of World War I, and an ominous future.
Winston Churchill
#82. When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.
Winston Churchill
#84. We must be very careful not to assign this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations
Winston Churchill
#85. I never slept as soundly as the night following Pearl Harbor. For I knew that The American Race would now be entering the war and it would never be the same.
Winston Churchill
#87. Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever.
Winston S. Churchill
#88. When I warned them [the French] 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!
Winston Churchill
#89. Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
Winston Churchill
#90. In War: Resolution,
In Defeat: Defiance,
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will.
Winston S. Churchill
#91. You know, in war, you don't have to be nice. You only have to be right.
Winston Churchill
#92. War, which used to be cruel and magnificent has now become cruel and squalid.
Winston Churchill
#93. I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.
Winston Churchill
#95. We have taken a grave and hazardous decision to sustain the Greeks and try to make a Balkan Front.
Winston Churchill
#96. How many have gone? How many more to go? The Admiralty is fast asleep and lethargy & inertia are the order of the day. However everybody seems delighted - so there is nothing to be said. No plans, no enterprise, no struggle to aid the general cause. Just sit still on the spacious throne and snooze.
Winston Churchill
#98. Winston Churchill could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war.
George Orwell
#99. 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 Churchill
#100. No more let us alter or falter or palter. From Malta to Yalta, and Yalta to Malta.
Winston Churchill
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