Winston S. Churchill

"If you cannot read all your books...fondle them---peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances."

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

"Of this I am certain, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future."

"Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have."

"“The longer you look back, the farther you can look forward.”"

"Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care ... We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force."

"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."

"Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history."

"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, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."

"The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."

"Sure I am this day we are masters of our fate, that the task which has been set before us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us."

"An old battleax of a woman said to Winston Churchill, If you were my husband I would put poison in your tea. Churchill's response, Ma'am if you were my wife I would drink it."

"I thought of a remark . . . that the United States is like a 'gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.' Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful."

"Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes."

"Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required."

"A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.” [In an interview conducted by Bram Stoker]"

"I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire."

"Always remember, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."

"A lady came up to me one day and said 'Sir! You are drunk', to which I replied 'I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly."

"I've gotten more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."