Courage and Strength

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he, alone among creatures, has an inexhaustible voice but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’

When Duty whispers low, Thou must,

I have done one braver thing

Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and he that will

The red badge of courage.

When there is no peril in the fight, there is no glory in the triumph.

Say not the struggle naught availeth,

When I warned them [the French Government] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, ‘In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.’ Some chicken! Some neck!

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

Give us the tools and we will finish the job.

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 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.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, 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.’

What is our aim? … 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.

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

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a human heart. One must imagine that Sisyphus is happy.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

Veni, vidi, vici.

Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of Man, without his vices.

Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,

Liberty’s in every blow!

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.