Sir Winston Churchill, was a bonafide inspirational bad-ass. He was the Prime Minister of the UK during much of World War II (1940-1945) and served again as Prime Minister from 1951 to 1955. His speeches kept the UK calm, diligant and inspired throughout the ward. Churchill himself was also an officer in the British Army. He was also a writer, historian, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States – So he was a great American too. His work is full of poignant and inspirational one-liners that will fill you with courage, embolden your ambition, and ignite you with passion.

Here are some of our favorite Churchill Quotes:

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” – Winston Churchill

Abundance & Great Things

2. “My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.” – Winston Churchill

3. “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.” – Winston Churchill

4. “We are all worms, But I do believe that I am a glow worm.” – Winston Churchill

Courage & Success

5. “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

6. “Success is not final…Failure is not fatal…it’s the courage to continue that counts” – Winston Churchill

7. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

8. “Doubts [can] be swept away only by deeds.” – Winston Churchill

9. “If you are going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill

10. “Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.” – Winston Churchill

Responsibility

11. “The price of greatness is responsibility.” – Winston Churchill

12. “We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls.” – Winston Churchill

13. “Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.” – Winston Churchill

Mindful Speech

14. “We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.” – Winston Churchill

15. “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.” – Winston Churchill

16. “Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.” – Winston Churchill

17. “Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they’ll enjoy the trip – Winston Churchill

18. “A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.” – Winston Churchill

19. “In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.” – Winston Churchill

 

Effort & Grit & Resilience

20. “Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.” – Winston Churchill

21. “It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.” – Winston Churchill

22. “There is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.” – Winston Churchill

23. “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.” – Winston Churchill

24. “Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.” – Winston Churchill

Challenge, Conflict & Criticism

25. “Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”– Winston Churchill

26. “Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.” 

27. “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill

28. “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop.” – Winston Churchill

29. “You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.” – Winston Churchill

30. “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” – Winston Churchill

Pessimism vs. Optimism

31.“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”– Winston Churchill

32.“For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.” – Winston Churchill

33. “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” – Winston Churchill

Politics

34. “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” – Winston Churchill

35. “I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” – Winston Churchill

Truth & Lies

36. “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” – Winston Churchill

37. “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” – Winston Churchill

38. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” – Winston Churchill

Focus On The Now

39. “It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.” – Winston Churchill

Victory

40. “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is 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.” – Winston Churchill

Improvement, Education & Perfection

41. “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.” – Winston Churchill

42. “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” – Winston Churchill

43. “Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.” – Winston Churchill

44. “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” – Winston Churchill

45. “The most important thing about education is appetite.” – Winston Churchill

46. “Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.” – Winston Churchill

47. “The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.” – Winston Churchill

Bullies & Aggression

48. “Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” – Winston Churchill

49. “We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”– Winston Churchill

Sweat Equity

50. “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” – Winston Churchill

Good vs. Great

51. “Good and great are seldom in the same man. ” – Winston Churchill

Fanaticism

52. “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” – Winston Churchill

Results

53. “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” – Winston Churchill

54. “When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone.” – Winston Churchill

55. “I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.” – Winston Churchill

Culture

56. “A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.” – Winston Churchill

57. “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill