Winston Churchill Adversity Quotations

Gentleman, I am hardening on this enterprise. I repeat, I am now hardening towards this enterprise.

When danger is far off we may think of our weakness; when it is near we must not forget our strength.

Everything trends towards catastrophe & collapse. I am interested, geared up & happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?

There is no doubt the charge was an awful gamble and that no normal precautions were possible. The issue as far as I was concerned had to be left to Fortune or to God - or to whatever may decide these things. I am content and shall not complain.

I could not help reflecting that the bullet which had struck the chestnut [horse] had certainly passed within a foot of my head. So at any rate I had been 'under fire.' That was something.

I am weary of a task which is done and I hope I shall not shrink when the aftermath ends. My only wish is to live peacefully out the remaining years - if years they be.

I look like a down-and-out drunk who has been picked out of the gutter in the Strand.

If I stay on for the time being, bearing the burden at my age, it is not because of love for power or office. I have had an ample share of both. If I stay it is because I have a feeling that I may, through things that have happened, have an influence about what I care about above all else, the building of a sure and lasting peace.

I feel like an aeroplane at the end of its flight, in the dusk, with the petrol running out, in search of a safe landing.

Nowadays we are assailed by a chorus of horrid threats. The Nazi government exudes through every neutral state inside information about the frightful vengeance they are going to wreak upon us, and they also bawl it around the world by their propaganda machinery. If words could kill, we shall be dead already.

I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget... we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat... All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness... We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that... Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.

Danger gathers upon our path. We cannot afford - we have no right - to look back. We must look forward... The stronger the advocate of monarchical principle a man may be, the more zealously he must now endeavor to fortify the Throne and to give to His Majesty's successor that strength which can only come from the love of a united nation and Empire.

We shall go forward together. The road upwards is stony. There are upon our journey dark and dangerous valleys through which we have to make and fight our way. But it is sure and certain that if we persevere - and we shall persevere - we shall come through these dark and dangerous valleys into a sunlight broader and more genial and more lasting than mankind has ever known.

God alone knows how great it is. All I hope is that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best.

You have to run risks. There are no certainties in war. There is a precipice on either side of you - a precipice of caution and a precipice of over-daring.

You never can tell whether bad luck may not after all turn out to be good luck.

It always looks so easy to solve problems by taking the line of least resistance.

Here life itself, life at its best and healthiest, awaits the caprice of the bullet. Let us see the development of the day. All else may stand over, perhaps for ever. Existence is never so sweet as when it is at hazard.