Quotes
 "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity." "I like a man who grins when he fights."
[when told by Nancy Astor {aka Lady Astor) that if she were his wife she would poison his tea] If I were your husband, I would drink it.
"A socialist policy is abhorrent to British ideas on freedom. A socialist state could not afford to suffer opposition - no socialist system can be established without a political police."
"Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."
"Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party."
"Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm."
"Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
"We have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed."
How I hated this school, and what a life of anxiety I lived there for more than two years. I made very little progress in my lessons, and none at all at games. I counted the days and the hours to the end of every term, when I should return home from this hateful servitude and range my soldiers in line of battle on the nursery floor. The greatest pleasure I had in those days was reading. When I was nine and a half my father gave me `Treasure Island`, and I remember the delight with which I devoured it. My teachers saw me at once backward and precocious, reading books beyond my years and yet at the bottom of the Form. They were offended. They had large resources of compulsion at their disposal, but I was stubborn. Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.
[his view on never finishing a sentence with a preposition] Up with this stupidity I will not put.
[responding to an accusation that he was conceived out of wedlock] Although present on the occasion, I have no recollection of the events leading up to it.
"Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is - the strong horse that pulls the whole cart."
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
"It is impossible to obtain a conviction for sodomy from an English jury. Half of them don`t believe that it can physically be done, and the other half are doing it."
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it`s the best system we have.
[on his deathbed] I`m so bored with it all.
[on the Soviet Union] It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
[upon hearing of the love affair between Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend] What a delightful match. A lovely young royal lady married to a gallant young airman, safe from the perils and horrors of war.
"Already by 1900 I could boast I had written as many books as Moses."
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
"I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught."
"We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us."
"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."
"Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant."
"Golf is a game whose aim it is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose."
"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender."
[(speech, 30th March 1940)] Although the fate of Poland stares them in the face, there are thoughtless dilettanti or purblind wordlings who sometimes ask us, `What is it that Britain and France are fighting for?` To this I answer, `If we left off fighting you would soon find out!`
[commenting on the Battle of Britain] Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Trivia
All members of the Churchill family had animal nicknames. Wife Clementine was "Cat", son Randolph was "Rabbit", daughter Mary was "Mouse", to name a few.
He was portrayed by Ian McNeice in the original production of the play "Never So Good", by Howard Brenton , which premiered at the National Theatre, London, UK in March 2008.
May have had Alzheimer`s disease in later life. Although the Churchill Museum maintains his reduced mental capacity was the result of multiple minor strokes since 1949, his symptoms were consistent with the illness.
When traveling abroad during World War II, he would travel under the alias "Col. Walden" for security reasons.
While a young student at Eton, he and some friends blew up a wooden shed using homemade gunpowder.
Almost missed proposing to his wife, Clementine, because he had promised to take her for a walk around the Blenheim Palace grounds, and then overslept. His cousin, Sunny, took Clementine for a carriage ride to prevent her from storming home, and sent a servant to roust Churchill out of bed.
Early in his writing career he was often mistaken for the American novelist whose name was also Winston Churchill. Churchill wrote to his American counterpart, and told him he was thereafter going to sign all his published works `Winston Spencer Churchill` to avoid confusion. The two actually met in Boston in 1899 and became fast friends.
Greta Garbo attended his funeral, as an extremely rare 1965 photograph proves.
He was already 65 years of age when he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1940. He suffered a mild heart attack in Washington in December 1941, a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was very ill with bronchitis around Christmas 1943. In 1949, as Leader of the Opposition, he suffered his first stroke while vacating in France; in June 1953, three weeks after the Coronation, he had a severe stroke which would have ended his second premiership had not Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden been hospitalized in America following three unsuccessful gall bladder operations. Following another stroke in April 1955, Churchill`s health remained reasonably good until a fall from his bed at the Hotel Paris in 1962. Thereafter there was no subsequent recovery, although he remained a Member of Parliament until the 1964 General Election, finally standing down a month before his 90th birthday.
He was awarded the O.M. (Order of Merit) and C.H. (Companion of Honor) but declined Life-Peerage.
His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, died of syphilis.
His mother, Jennie Jerome, was born in Brooklyn, New York City (on Amity Street to be exact) of a mother who was one-quarter Iroquois Indian. She was one of the few tattooed women in high society - a snake coiled around her left wrist.
His relationship with his wife was strained by the fact that she rose early every morning and he slept late. As a result they usually left notes and small letters to each other to maintain the intimacy.
Proposed marriage to Ethel Barrymore. She refused him, but they remained friends.
When Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924, his robes of office were the same ones his father had used a generation earlier.
Came in first place in the BBC`s poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. [2004]
Daughter was actress Sarah Churchill.
Early in his life, he briefly worked as a greeting card designer for Hallmark.
First gained fame in England as a war correspondent during the Boer War in 1899-1900. While covering the conflict (as what amounted to an "embedded" journalist, long before the term was coined) he was captured by Boer guerrillas and taken as a prisoner of war. Along with a few other prisoners, Churchill hatched a bold scheme to escape. The success of this plan catapulted him to fame and helped him along on his political career.
He was born in a Lady`s bedroom during a party at Blenheim Palace.
His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, died on 24 January 1895, exactly 70 years to the day before Winston himself passed away.
His favourite drink was champagne, his favourite brand Pol Roger.
Said to have refused to allow his successor to nominate him for a peerage after his final resignation as Prime Minister in 1955, ostensibly to allow his son to contest a seat in the House of Commons.
Time Magazine`s "Man of the Year" (1940 & 1949)
Was a member of The Tuna Club in southern California, the oldest fishing club in the United States. Its members at one time also included Theodore Roosevelt, George S. Patton, Charles Chaplin, and Bing Crosby.
"Battling Bessie Braddock", fiery Labour MP from Liverpool once said to Churchill, "Winston, you`re drunk!" To which he replied, "Bessie, you`re ugly, but in the morning I shall be sober."
Awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize in literature, he was allegedly disappointed that it wasn`t the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to prevent the Cold War between the East and West from deteriorating into nuclear conflict.
He is buried in a modest churchyard in Bladon, not far from his birthplace at Blenheim Palace. Chartwell, his country house, is open to the public. Much of his painting was done there.
He was awarded the Order of the Garter in 1953, becoming Sir Winston. Both he and his Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden had declined this honor in 1945, feeling it inappropriate following the landslide General Election defeat.
In 1963, by Act of Congress, he was bestowed with honorary U.S. citizenship, the first recipient since Lafayette. He was too infirm to travel to Washington, DC, to receive the honor in person.
Married at St. Margaret`s, Westminster, England. Clementine was a decade younger than him.
Nancy Astor once said to Churchill, "If I was your wife I`d poison your coffee!" He replied, "If I was your husband I`d drink it.".
That Hamilton Woman (1941) is reported to have been his favorite movie.
The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, "Fat Man", was christened by US Gen. Leslie Groves with Churchill in mind. The Hiroshima bomb, "Little Boy", was originally called "Thin Man", in honor of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The first American combat ship named after a foreigner, the guided-missile cruiser USS Winston S. Churchill, was launched on 17 April 1999.
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