Tom is a solicitor in Belper as well as a very knowledgeable and obsessed devotee of Sir Winston Spencer Churchill. He rates Sir Winston on a par with Albert Einstein as the most memorable “good” men of the twentieth century. His talk was so far ranging and captivating that for this short report, I will concentrate on his poetic use of the English language and list some of his famous quotations.
- 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!” - We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
- There is no such thing as a good tax.
- 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.
- The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
- 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.
- An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.
- The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
- From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put.
- A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
- Nancy Astor: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison.”
Churchill: “If I were your husband I would take it.” - A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
- Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened.
- If you are going to go through hell, keep going.
- It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
- If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.
- You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.
- History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
- Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.
- The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
- A sheep in sheep’s clothing. (On Clement Atlee)
- A modest man, who has much to be modest about. (On Clement Atlee)
- I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
- The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.
- A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
- 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.
- Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.
- Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
- Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
- The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.