"My good friends this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time."
- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (after he signed the Munich Pact with Germany)
"Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill (about the Royal Air Force)
"We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill (after the fall of France)
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"I want to warn against underestimating. There will be
bloody battles once the Allied forces run against Axis fortifications. Europe will not be conquered quickly. We must not make
the mistake of underestimating the fortifications in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Italy and in the Southeast.
We must realize that attacking them will cost us much in blood and tears."
- Cyrill Falls, British Military Observer
"You are the forefront of the army that we will use in the course of the summer to cleanse Norway of the dreadful filth of
Nazi tyranny."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill (a speech to the survivors of the British destroyers "Hardy" and "Ellipse")
"We would fight not for the political future of a distant city [Danzig], rather for principles whose destruction would ruin the possibility of peace and security for the peoples of the earth."
- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
"India is not ready to take part in the present war, which would endanger its own freedom. The governments of France and England declared that they are waging war for democracy and freedom, yet they themselves betray the principles they espouse."
- Executive Committee of the Indian National Congress (September 23, 1939)
"We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea and air--war with all our might and with all the strength God has given us--and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1940)
"Let that be realized. No survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge, the impulse of the ages, that mankind shall move forward toward his goal."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terrors. Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"One man and one man alone has ranged the Italian people in deadly struggle against the British Empire and has deprived Italy of the sympathy and intimacy of the United States of America...One man has arrayed the trustees and inheritors of ancient Rome upon the side of the ferocious pagan barbarians...There lies the tragedy of Italian history and there stands the criminal who has wrought the deed of folly and of shame."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say 'This was their finest hour!'"
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"The German Chancellor and others gave the impression that they were not likely to embark on adventures involving force or at least war."
- Lord Halifax (1937)
"I am sure that the crossing of the frontier of Czechoslovakia by German armies or aviation in force will bring about the renewal of the World War. I am as certain as I was at the end of July, 1914, that England will march with France... Do not, I pray you, be misled upon this point..."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill (before he became Prime Minister; speaking days before the Munich Agreement, 1938)
"In spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word."
- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1938, days prior to the Munich Agreement, speaking about Herr Hitler)
"However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbor, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in a war simply on her account. If we have to fight it must be on larger issues than that..."
- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1938, about the conflict between Germany and Czechoslavkia)
"We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat... we are in the midst of a disaster of the first magnitude. The road down the Danube... the road to the Black Sea has been open... All the countries of Mittel Europa and the Danube valley, one after another, will be drawn in the vast system of Nazi politics... radiating from Berlin... And do not suppose that this is the end. It is only the beginning..."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill (before he became Prime Minister; after the signing of the Munich Agreement)
"In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in thier power. They have given the Polish Government as assurance to this effect. I may add that the French Government have authorized me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter."
- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (March 31, 1939)
"This is a sad day for all of us, and to none is it sadder than to me. Everything that I have worked for, everthing that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins. There is only one thing left for me to do: That is, to devote what strength and powers I have to forwarding the victory of the cause for which we have to sacrifice so much... I trust I may live to see the day when Hitlerism has been destroyed and a liberated Europe has been re-established."
- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (September 3, 1938 on the BBC)
"The strongest army in the world [the French] facing no more than twenty-six [German] divisions, sitting still and sheltering behind steel and concrete while a quixotically valiant ally was being exterminated!"
- General J. F. C. Fuller (speaking of the "Phony War" between France and Germany)
"To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!...Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill (after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor)
"Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill [summitted by Julie]
"I like a man who grins when he fights."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"We are having shock after shock out here. The damage to the battleships at this time is a disaster... One cannot but admire the cold-blooded bravery and enterprise of these Italians."
- Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham,
Commander in Chief of Britain's Mediterranean Fleet (speaking of the Italian Navy Frogmen)
"Everyone has the jitters, seeing objects swimming about at night and hearing movements on ships' bottoms. It must stop."
- Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham,
Commander in Chief of Britain's Mediterranean Fleet (speaking of the Italian Navy Frogmen)
"Before Alamein, we had no victories. After Alamein, we had no defeats."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
