Great Throughts Treasury

"Where there is a great deal of free speech there is always a certain amount of foolish speech."

"Which brings me to my conclusion upon Free Will and Predestination, namely ? let the reader mark it ? that they are identical."

"Why you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman, and the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together-and what do you get? The sum of their fears."

"William now directed his archers to shoot high into the air, so that the arrows would fall behind the shield-wall, and one of these pierced Harold in the right-eye, inflicting a mortal wound. He fell at the foot of the royal standard, unconquerable except by death, which does not count in honor. The hard-fought battle was now decided."

"While being served a cold chicken lunch in America, Churchill asked the hostess: May I have some breast? Mr. Churchill, she replied, In this country we ask for white meat or dark meat."

"With her factories equipped to the very latest point of science by British and American money."

"Winston Churchill, for his part, regarded Gandhi with not a little contempt, describing the 'Mahatma' as a dangerous charlatan: "It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice regal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of King-Emperor.""

"Without courage, all other virtues lose their meaning."

"Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse."

"Without any coherent national organization to repel from the land on which they had settled the ever-unknowable descents from the seas, the Saxons, now for four centuries entitled to be deemed the owners of the soil, very nearly succumbed completely to the Danish inroads. That they did not was due--as almost every critical turn of historic fortune has been due--to the sudden apparition in an era of confusion and decay of one of the great figures of history."

"Without courage all virtues lose their meaning."

"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."

"Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred bloods-soaked battlefields."

"Working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation."

"Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant."

"You and I must take care not to lose the next war."

"Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind."

"Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes 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 to the public."

"You [Hitler] do your worst, and we will do our best."

"You are drunk Sir Winston, you are disgustingly drunk. Yes, Mrs. Braddock, I am drunk. But you, Mrs. Braddock are ugly, and disgustingly fat. But, tomorrow morning, I, Winston Churchill will be sober."

"You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities."

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing?after they've tried everything else."

"You cannot ask us to take sides against arithmetic."

"You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terrors. Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival."

"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."

"You create your own universe as you go along."

"You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer."

"You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give."

"You have enemies? Good. That means you?ve stood up for something, sometime in your life."

"You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."

"You might however consider whether you should not unfold as a background the great privilege of habeas corpus and trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the English people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the Executive to cast a man in prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist."

"You make all kinds of mistakes, but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her."

"You may try to destroy all the wealth and find that all you have done is increase poverty."

"You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, airplanes, fortifications, and the like - they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home - all the more powerful because forbidden - terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armory of potent and indestructible knowledge?"

"You must look at the facts because they look at you."

"You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth."

"You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war. 1938, after Prime Minister Chamberlain signed an agreement with Hitler. [to Neville Chamberlain]"

"You will make all kinds of mistakes but as long as you are generous and true and fierce you cannot hurt the world, or even seriously distress her."

"You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks."

"You'll never find a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me."

"Youth is for freedom and reforms maturity for reasonable compromises and aging stability and rest."

"Young people at universities study to achieve knowledge and not to learn a trade. We must all learn how to support ourselves, but we must also learn how to live. We need a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of modern engineers."