Winston Churchill

Nature will not be admired by proxy.

It is not alone that property, in all its forms, is struck at, but that liberty, in all its forms, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of socialism.

The Almighty in His infinite wisdom did not see fit to create Frenchmen in the image of Englishmen.

Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it's the best system we have.

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

Without execution, thinking is mere idleness.

It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events.

I play for high stakes and given an audience - there is no act too daring or too noble.

... I think it would be so much better for me to learn something which would be useful to me in the army, as well as affording me exercise and amusement.

"I hope, sir, that I will shoot your picture on your hundredth birthday." I don't see why not, young man. You look reasonably fit and healthy.

I have in my life concentrated more on self-expression than self-denial.

I'm bored with it all. Before slipping into a coma. He died 9 days later.

When danger is far off we may think of our weakness; when it is near we must not forget our strength.

There is no doubt the charge was an awful gamble and that no normal precautions were possible. The issue as far as I was concerned had to be left to Fortune or to God - or to whatever may decide these things. I am content and shall not complain.

Nowadays we are assailed by a chorus of horrid threats. The Nazi Government exudes through every neutral State inside information of the frightful vengeance they are going to wreak upon us, and they also bawl it around the world by their leather-lunged propaganda machine. If words could kill, we should be dead already.

I look like a down-and-out drunk who has been picked out of the gutter in the Strand.

I feel like an aeroplane at the end of its flight, in the dusk, with the petrol running out, in search of a safe landing.

We shall go forward together. The road upwards is stony. There are upon our journey dark and dangerous valleys through which we have to make and fight our way. But it is sure and certain that if we persevere - and we shall persevere - we shall come through these dark and dangerous valleys into a sunlight broader and more genial and more lasting than mankind has ever known.

If tonight our people were asked to cast their vote whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of cities, the overwhelming majority would cry, "We will mete out to them [the Germans] the measure, and more than the measure, that they have meted out to us... 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."

We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official, a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges

May the pain you have known and the conflict you have experienced give you the strength to walk through life facing each new situation with courage and optimism.