Quotes

The portrait is a remarkable example of modern art. It certainly combines force and candour.

Winston Churchill, 9 Nov 1954, Westminster Hall, London

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns. When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject. But then I shall require a still gayer palette than I get here below. I expect orange and vermilion will be the darkest, dullest colours upon it, and beyond them there will be a whole range of wonderful new colours which will delight the celestial eye.

Winston Churchill, Jan 1922, ‘Painting as a Pastime’, Strand Magazine

It would be a measureless disaster if Russian barbarism overlaid the culture and independence of the ancient States of Europe.

Winston Churchill, 21 October 1942, The Second World War IV

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the interest or the safety of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of the Black Sea, or that it should overrun the Balkan States and subjugate the Slavonic peoples of South-Eastern Europe. That would be contrary to the historic life-interests of Russia.

Winston Churchill, Broadcast from London, 1 October 1939

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.

Winston Churchill

It is arguable whether the human race have been gainers by the march of science beyond the steam engine. Electricity opens a field of infinite conveniences to ever greater numbers, but they may well have to pay dearly for them. But anyhow in my thought I stop short of the internal combustion engine which has made the world so much smaller. Still more must we fear the consequences of entrusting to a human race so little different from their predecessors of the so-called barbarous ages such awful agencies as the atomic bomb. Give me the horse.

Winston Churchill, 10 July 1951, Royal College of Physicians, London

‘United wishes and good will cannot overcome brute facts,’ Churchill wrote in his War Memoirs. ‘Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is.’

Winston Churchill

‘The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.’

Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 22 October 1945

In the twinkling of an eye, I found myself without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix.

Churchill, 1931, ‘Election Memories’, Strand Magazine