Winston Churchill Leadership Quotations

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground.

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

Nobody ever launched an attack without having misgivings beforehand, You ought to have misgivings before; but when the moment of action is come, the hour of misgivings is passed. It is often not possible to go backward from a course which has been adopted in war. A man must answer "Aye" or "No" to the great questions which are put, and by that decision he must be bound.

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.

There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away.

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

I let the argument rip healthily between the departments. This is a very good way to finding out the truth.

Hasty work and premature decisions may lead to penalties out of all proportion to the issues immediately involved.

We must not lose our faculty to dare, particularly in dark days.

It is very easy to say that your opponents have been guilty of a breach of faith, but it is a great mistake to splash the paint about so freely that your words cease to have any real meaning and cease to carry any sense of affront even to those to whom they are applied and cease to bear any connection with any genuine feeling of indignation on the part of those on whose behalf they are spoken.

There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right. That is the only way to deserve and to win the confidence of our great people in these days of trouble.

The is always much to be said for not attempting more than you can do and for making a certainty of what you try. But this principle, like others in life and war, has it exceptions.

Let us reconcile ourselves to the mysterious rhythm of our destinies, such as they must be in this world of space and time.

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Never does a man portray his character more vividly than when proclaiming the character of another.

I'm just preparing my impromptu remarks.