It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Winston ChurchillRead
The enemy is still proud and powerful. He is hard to get at. He still possesses enormous armies, vast resources, and invaluable strategic territories...No one can tell what new complications and perils might arise in four or five more years of war. And it is in the dragging-out of the war at enormous expense, until the democracies are tired or bored or split that the main hopes of Germany and Japan must reside.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the ongoing strength and resilience of the enemy in a protracted conflict.
Winston Churchill's quote highlights the formidable nature of the enemy, acknowledging their considerable resources and strategic advantages. It suggests that the prolongation of war could lead to eventual fatigue or division among democracies, which could ultimately favor the adversaries. Thus, the real danger lies not only in their current power but in the potential for exhaustion and fragmentation over time.
Themes
WarEnemyPowerDemocracyStrategy
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about the necessity of resolve in prolonged conflicts.
More from Winston Churchill
All quotes →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.
Winston ChurchillRead
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
Winston ChurchillRead
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
Winston ChurchillRead
Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.
Winston ChurchillRead
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Winston ChurchillRead
Similar quotes
If those who support aggressive war had seen a fraction of what I've seen, if they'd watched children fry to death from Napalm and bleed to death from a cluster bomb, they might not utter the claptrap they do.
John PilgerRead
No place is safe - no place is at peace. There is no place where a women and her daughter can hide and be at peace. The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the morning, and see air-fleets passing overhead - dripping death - dripping death!
H. G. WellsRead
Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front; _x000D_ _x000D_ And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds _x000D_ _x000D_ To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, _x000D_ _x000D_ He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber _x000D_ _x000D_ To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
William ShakespeareRead
Then somebody suggested I should write about the war, and I said I didn't know anything about the war. I did not understand anything about it. I didn't see how I could write it
Martha GellhornRead
War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.
Albert PikeRead
He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were.
J. D. SalingerRead