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
Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.
H. L. MenckenRead
All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.
George OrwellRead
Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.
James MonroeRead
A man may be theologically knowing and spiritually ignorant.
Stephen CharnockRead
I can't imagine not being in a phase where I'm trying to understand something or create something. That's the essence of life.
Kip ThorneRead
I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second.
Mary OliverRead