It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Winston ChurchillRead
In Russia a man is called reactionary if he objects to having his property stolen and his wife and children murdered.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the absurdity of labeling someone negatively for defending their basic rights and values.
Winston Churchill's quote highlights the irony in the term 'reactionary', suggesting that in a society where violent acts against individuals and their families become normalized, the act of resisting such injustices is unjustly condemned. This serves to reflect on the moral complexities and twisted perceptions that can arise in oppressive regimes, where the victim's defense becomes the offense in a distorted narrative.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about civil rights during a political rally.
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.
To a hungry man, a piece of bread is the face of God.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.
You can oppose reparations all you want, but you got to know the facts. You really, really do.
So . . . I feel in regard to this aged England . . . pressed upon by transitions of trade and . . . competing populations,-I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;-indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon.
In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.