It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Winston ChurchillRead
How many have gone? How many more to go? The Admiralty is fast asleep and lethargy & inertia are the order of the day. However everybody seems delighted - so there is nothing to be said. No plans, no enterprise, no struggle to aid the general cause. Just sit still on the spacious throne and snooze.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the complacency and inaction of leaders despite pressing issues.
Winston Churchill's quote critiques the passivity and lack of initiative among those in power during times that require action and leadership. It highlights a frustration with the tendency to remain inactive, even as circumstances demand change and progress, illustrating a contrast between the satisfaction of the public and the neglect of urgent responsibilities by the elite.
Themes
ComplacencyLeadershipActionInertiaCritique
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a conference on leadership to emphasize the need for proactive governance.
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
Should the States reject this excellent Constitution, the probability is, an opportunity will never again offer to cancel another in peacethe next will be drawn in blood.
George WashingtonRead
When Zarathustra was alone . . . he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!"
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Without food, man at most can live but a few weeks; without it all other components of social justice are meaningless.
Norman BorlaugRead
It seemed to me that all things were possible on the island, all tyrannies and cruelties, though in small; and if, in despite of what was possible, we lived at peace with another, surely this was proof that certain laws unknown to us held sway, or else that we had been following the promptings of our hearts all this time, and our hearts had not betrayed us.
J. M. CoetzeeRead
The cynic says, "One man can't do anything". I say, "Only one man can do anything."
John W. GardnerRead
The President, and government, will only control the militia when a part of them is in the actual service of the federal government, else, they are independent and not under the command of the president or the government. The states would control the militia, only when called out into the service of the state, and then the governor would be commander in chief where enumerated in the respective state constitution.
Alexander HamiltonRead