105 Inspirational Winston Churchill Quotes [2024] Former Prime Minister of the UK

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Updated: January 20th, 2022

Winston Churchill was a British statesman, author, and speaker who served as a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom before & during the second world war.

Churchill became popular in the United Kingdom and the Western world, where he is seen as a victorious wartime leader who played a key role in defending Europe's liberal democracy against the spread of fascism.

Winston Churchill is praised as a social reformer.

We've put together an incredible collection of Winston Churchill quotes to read.

Here they are:

105 Inspirational Winston Churchill Quotes [2024] Former Prime Minister of the UK

List of Inspiring Winston Churchill Quotes

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. - Winston Churchill

Everyone has his day, and some days last longer than others. - Winston Churchill

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

Do not let us speak of darker days; let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived. - Winston Churchill

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 Churchill

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

Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is the allotted span for all we must cram into it! - Winston Churchill

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

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

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber. - Winston Churchill

It is a fine thing, to be honest, but it is also very important to be right. - Winston Churchill

To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to change often. - Winston Churchill

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes. - Winston Churchill

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

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

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 no longer strong. - Winston Churchill

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

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me. - Winston Churchill

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult. - Winston Churchill

It is no use saying ‘we are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary. - Winston Churchill

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

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out. - Winston Churchill

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have. - Winston Churchill

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. - Winston Churchill

There is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure. - Winston Churchill

The English know how to make the best of things. Their so-called muddling through is simply a skill at dealing with the inevitable. - Winston Churchill

It is wonderful what great strides can be made when there is a resolute purpose behind them. - Winston Churchill

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

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. - Winston Churchill

I may be drunk, miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. - Winston Churchill

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won. - Winston Churchill

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. - Winston Churchill

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge. - Winston Churchill

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall that is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you. - Winston Churchill

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 a tremendous whack. - Winston Churchill

Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed. - Winston Churchill

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn’t happen. - Winston Churchill

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for the lost time when I come home. - Winston Churchill

Every man should ask himself each day whether he is not too readily accepting negative solutions. - Winston Churchill

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. - Winston Churchill

All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope. - Winston Churchill

If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future. - Winston Churchill

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the hard may be, for without victory there is no survival. - Winston Churchill

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. - Winston Churchill

Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: “This was their finest hour. - Winston Churchill

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for. - Winston Churchill

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong. - Winston Churchill

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

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

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law. - Winston Churchill

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. - Winston Churchill

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

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

We must beware of needless innovations, especially when guided by logic. - Winston Churchill

The English never draw a line without blurring it. - Winston Churchill

The price of greatness is responsibility. - Winston Churchill

Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection. - Winston Churchill

In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound and everything that is sound is disagreeable. - Winston Churchill

War is mainly a catalog of blunders. - Winston Churchill

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. - Winston Churchill

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself. - Winston Churchill

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. - Winston Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. - Winston Churchill

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. Never run away from anything. Never! - Winston Churchill

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room. - Winston Churchill

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it. - Winston Churchill

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. - Winston Churchill

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result. - Winston Churchill

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

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. - Winston Churchill

It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. - Winston Churchill

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. - Winston Churchill

No crime is so great as daring to excel. - Winston Churchill

Broadly speaking short words are best and the old words when short, are best of all. - Winston Churchill

If you’re going through hell, keep going. - Winston Churchill

Say what you have to say and the first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending sit down. - Winston Churchill

What is adequacy? Adequacy is no standard at all. - Winston Churchill

I have never accepted what many people have kindly said, namely that I have inspired the nation. It was the nation and the race dwelling all around the globe that had the lionheart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar. - Winston Churchill

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

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. - Winston Churchill

Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry. - Winston Churchill

If you're going through hell, keep going. - Winston Churchill

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. - Winston Churchill

If one has to submit, it is wasteful not to do so with the best grace possible. - Winston Churchill

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

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

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it. - Winston Churchill

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 honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. - Winston Churchill

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old. - Winston Churchill

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. - Winston Churchill

All I can say is that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. - Winston Churchill

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter. - Winston Churchill

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod. - Winston Churchill

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

Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts. - Winston Churchill

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival. - Winston Churchill

We shape our dwellings, and afterward, our dwellings shape us. - Winston Churchill

I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic. - Winston Churchill

It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required. - Winston Churchill

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. - Winston Churchill

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty. - Winston Churchill

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. - Winston Churchill

Success is never found. Failure is never fatal. Courage is the only thing. - Winston Churchill

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

Let our advanced worrying become advanced thinking and planning. - Winston Churchill

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