Winston Churchill

[ Of Clement Attlee :] A modest man who has a good deal to be modest about.

[ Describing Clement Attlee :] A sheep in sheep’s clothing.

Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.

It is not easy to see how things could be worsened by a parley at the summit, if such a thing were possible.

The government of the world must be entrusted to satisfied nations, who wished nothing more for themselves than what they had. . . . Our power placed us above the rest. We were like rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations.

It may almost be said, “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.”

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

On the night of the tenth of May [1940], at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State, which henceforth I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having surrendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs.

We should not abandon our special relationship with the United States and Canada about the atomic bomb.

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. . . . From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

The proud German army by its sudden collapse, sudden crumbling and breaking up, has once again proved the truth of the saying “The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet.”

On the night of May 10, 1941, with one of the last bombs of the last serious raid our House of Commons was destroyed by the violence of the enemy, and we have now to consider whether we should build it up again, and how, and when. We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.

I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.

The V sign is the symbol of the unconquerable will of the occupied territories, and a portent of the fate awaiting the Nazi tyranny.

Do not let us speak of darker days; let us rather speak of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.

We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.

The people of London with one voice would say to Hitler: “You have committed every crime under the sun. . . . We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst—and we will do our best.”

The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

Their sweat, their tears, their blood bedewed the endless plain.

[ Of Ramsey MacDonald :] I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as “The Boneless Wonder.” My parents judged that the spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing for my youthful eyes, and I have waited 50 years to see the boneless wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.

By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. . . . I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence—which is a noble thing.

[ Responding to criticism that he edited the British Gazette in a biased manner during the General Strike :] I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire.

Business carried on as usual during alterations on the map of Europe.

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.