Winston Churchill quotations

I saw Winston Churchill’s grave after visiting Blenheim Palace yesterday.

In these dark days of leftist idealism, creeping sharia law and government appeasement, his words are especially important.

Here are some choice quotations:

The warnings

“What the horn is to the rhinoceros, what the sting is to the wasp, the Mohammadan faith is to the Arabs.”

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

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.”

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

“‘All men are created equal’ says the American Declaration of Independence. ‘All men shall be kept equal’ say the Socialists.”

“Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State.”

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

War speeches

“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 long months of toil and struggle.

You ask what is our policy. I will say, it is to wage war with all our might, 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.

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.”

“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!”

“If we can stand up.. [to Hitler's totalitarian threat], all Europe may be free and the life of the world may more forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, 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 made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

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.’

Quips

Lady Astor: “If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee.”
Churchill (attrib.): “If I were married to you, I’d drink it.”

Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.”
Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”

Others

“The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.”

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”