It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Winston ChurchillRead
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the romanticized view of naval history as a noble tradition while emphasizing its harsh realities.
Winston Churchill's quote challenges the glorification of naval tradition, arguing that beneath its surface lies a history marked by excessive alcohol, sexual exploitation, and punishment. By reducing these elements to raw terms, Churchill highlights the darker aspects of a world often celebrated for its honor, bravery, and camaraderie, urging us to recognize the complexities and unpleasant truths of our legacies.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about reevaluating historical narratives during a history seminar.
It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there's no limit to the power it can generate.
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Therefore, if God existed, only in one way could he serve human liberty - by ceasing to exist.
I think that ideas exist outside of ourselves. I think somewhere, we're all connected off in some very abstract land. But somewhere between there and here ideas exist.
What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal
Oh thrice fools are we who like new-born princes weeping in the cradle know not that there is a kingdom before them then let our Lord's sweet hand square us and hammer us and strike off the knots of pride self-love and world-worship and infidelity that He may make us stones and pillars in His Father's house.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.