80 Winston Churchill Quotes About War & Courage

Which are your favorite Winston Churchill quotes?

Sir Winston Churchill was a British statesman who was Prime Minister of the UK from 1940 – 1945 and again from 1951 – 1955. Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a non-academic historian, a writer, and an artist.

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953, and in 1963, he was the first of only eight people to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.

We’ve put together this enormous collection of the 80 best Winston Churchill quotes of all time:

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80 Winston Churchill Quotes

1. “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.” – Winston Churchill

2. “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” – Winston Churchill

3. “Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.” – Winston Churchill

4. “We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” – Winston Churchill

5. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” – Winston Churchill

6. “All I can say is that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” – Winston Churchill

7. “All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honour; duty; mercy; hope.” – Winston Churchill

8. “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last.” – Winston Churchill

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9. “Attitude is a little thing that makes a BIG difference.” – Winston Churchill

10. “Broadly speaking short words are best and the old words when short, are best of all.” – Winston Churchill

11. “Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.” – Winston Churchill

12. “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.” – Winston Churchill

13. “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.” – Winston Churchill

14. “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, it’s also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

15. “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.” – Winston Churchill

16. “Every man should ask himself each day whether he is not too readily accepting negative solutions.” – Winston Churchill

17. “Everyone has his day, and some days last longer than others.” – Winston Churchill

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18. “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” – Winston Churchill

19. “Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, 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!’” – Winston Churchill

20. “I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” – Winston Churchill

21. “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.” – Winston Churchill

22. “I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” – Winston Churchill

23. “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” – Winston Churchill

24. “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find that we have lost the future.” – Winston Churchill

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25. “If you are going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill

26. “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.” – Winston Churchill

27. “If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.” – Winston Churchill

28. “If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” – Winston Churchill

29. “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill

30. “In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound and everything that is sound is disagreeable.” – Winston Churchill

31. “In the course of my life I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.” – Winston Churchill

32. “In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity.” – Winston Churchill

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33. “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.” – Winston Churchill

34. “It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.” – Winston Churchill

35. “It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.” – Winston Churchill

36. “It is wonderful what great strides can be made when there is a resolute purpose behind them.” – Winston Churchill

37. “It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.” – Winston Churchill

38. “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.” – Winston Churchill

39. “Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” – Winston Churchill

40. “Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.” – Winston Churchill

41. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” – Winston Churchill

42. “Never, never, 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. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.” – Winston Churchill

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43. “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” – Winston Churchill

44. “One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.” – Winston Churchill

45. “Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.” – Winston Churchill

46. “Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.” – Winston Churchill

47. “Politics is 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.” – Winston Churchill

48. “Socialists think profits are a vice; I consider losses the real vice.” – Winston Churchill

49. “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

50. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

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51. “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

52. “The Americans will always do the right thing… after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.” – Winston Churchill

53. “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” – Winston Churchill

54. “The first duty of the university is to teach wisdom, not a trade; character, not technicalities. We want a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of engineers.” – Winston Churchill

55. “The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.” – Winston Churchill

56. “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” – Winston Churchill

57. “The price of greatness is responsibility.” – Winston Churchill

58. “The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.” – Winston Churchill

59. “The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that when nations are strong they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are often no longer strong.” – Winston Churchill

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60. “There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.” – Winston Churchill

61. “There 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

62. “There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right.” – Winston Churchill

63. “This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.” – Winston Churchill

64. “This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force, never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” – Winston Churchill

65. “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

66. “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.” – Winston Churchill

67. “To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!…Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.” – Winston Churchill

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68. “To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to change often.” – Winston Churchill

69. “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.” – Winston Churchill

70. “We (The British) have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.” – Winston Churchill

71. “We shall not fail or falter. We shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.” – Winston Churchill

72. “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 the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. And 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

73. “We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.” – Winston Churchill

74. “What is adequacy? Adequacy is no standard at all.” – Winston Churchill

75. “What kind of a people do they (Japan) think we are? Is it possible they do not realise that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?” – Winston Churchill

76. “When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.” – Winston Churchill

77. “When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.” – Winston Churchill

78. “Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy then an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then it becomes a tyrant and, in the last stage, just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.” – Winston Churchill

79. “You ask, What is our policy? I will say; ‘It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.’ You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: 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 Churchill

80. “You have enemies? Good. It means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill