Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, RAwas a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a non-academic historian, a writer, and an artist. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWorld Leader
Date of Birth30 November 1874
CityWoodstock, England
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.
I'm finished ... I'm done. What I want above all things is to take some active part in beating the Germans ... I'd go out to the Front at once.
Next time I go into the action - I shall command a hundred men - & possibly I may bring off some coup. Besides I shall have some other motive for taking chances than merely "love of adventure".
Here was a place where real things were going on. Here was a scene of vital action. Here was a place where anything might happen. Here was a place where something would certainly happen. Here I might leave my bones.
For the first time I heard shots fired in anger, heard bullets strike flesh or whistle through the air.
Luckily ... there were Zulus and Afghans, also the Dervishes in the Soudan. Some of these might, if they were well-disposed, 'put up a show' some day.
I myself find waiting more tiring than action.
We should lay aside every hindrance and endeavour by uniting the whole force and spirit of our people to raise again a great British nation standing up before all the world; for such a nation, rising in its ancient vigour, can even at this hour save civilization.
We will mete out to the Germans the measure and more than the measure that they have meted out to us. We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst and we will do our best.
Before the war it had seemed incredible that such terrors and slaughters, even if they began, could last more than a few months. After the first two years it was difficult to believe that they would ever end.
These are great days.
We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official, a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges