Winston Churchhill

[eaglethebeagle]

ON APPEASEMENT:

"There is no greater mistake than to suppose that platitudes, smooth words, and timid policies offer a path to safety."

"How many wars have been averted by patience and good will?"

"An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last."

"When nations are strong, they are not always just and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong."

"Victory will never be found by taking the line of least resistance."

"I cannot subscribe to the idea that it might be possible to dig ourselves in and make no preparations for anything else than passive defense. It is the theory of the turtle."

"I never worry about action, but only about inaction."

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.


Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

Truth is incontrovertible, ignorance can deride it, panic may resent it, malice may destroy it, but there it is.

Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery.

[eaglethebeagle]

The power of the Executive to cast a man into 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.

[eaglethebeagle]

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nazism

[eaglethebeagle]

"You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken – unspeakable! – fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse – a little tiny mouse! – of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic."

[eaglethebeagle]

Never abandon life. There is a way out of everything except death.

[eaglethebeagle]

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

[eaglethebeagle]

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. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. 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 in 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.