Great Throughts Treasury

"Give us the tools and we will finish the job."

"Go out into the sunlight and be happy with what you see."

"God for a month of power and a good shorthand writer."

"Golf is a game who's aim it is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose."

"Good gracious! What there is to admire and how little time there is to see it in! For the first time one begins to envy Methuselah."

"Good and great are seldom in the same man."

"Good cognac is like a woman. Do not assault it. Coddle and warm it in your hands before you sip it."

"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."

"Great and good are seldom the same man."

"Goodnight then: sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly upon all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn. Vive la France! Long live also the forward march of the common people in all the lands towards their just and true inheritance, and towards the broader and fuller age."

"Great man? Why, he's selfish, he's arrogant, he thinks he's the center of the universe - yes, you're right. He "is" a great man!"

"Half my lifetime I have earned my living by selling words, and I hope thoughts"

"Greatly his foes he dreads, but more his friends; he hurts me most who lavishly commends."

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

"Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely."

"Haven't you heard yet that I put something more than whiskey into my speeches?"

"He [President Franklin D. Roosevelt] died in harness, and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors and airmen who died side by side with ours and carrying out their tasks to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his."

"He (Lord Charles Beresford) is one of those orators of whom it was well said. 'Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying; and when they have sat down, they do not know what they have said.'"

"He delivers his speech with an expression of wounded guilt. [on Stafford Cripps]"

"He has to conceal what he would most wish to make public, and make public what he would most wish to conceal."

"He looked at foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe. [on Neville Chamberlain]"

"He always played the game, and he always lost it. [on Austin Chamberlain]"

"He has all the virtues that cannot stand, and none of the vices of which I admire. (on Clement Attlee)"

"He is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about."

"He is one of those orators of whom it was well said. Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying; and when they have sat down, they do not know what they have said. [on Lord Charles Beresford]"

"He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened. [on Stanley Baldwin]"

"He looks like a female llama who has just been surprised in her bath."

"He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle."

"He said he was like a crocodile. You never knew whether he was trying to smile or preparing to swallow you up."

"He sees with amazement that our defeats are but the stepping stones to victory and that all his victories are stepping stones to ruin. It was apparent to me that this bad man saw quite clearly the shadow of slowly and remorselessly approaching doom, and he railed at fortune for mocking him with the glitter of fleeting success."

"Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime Ministers have never yet been invested."

"He spoke with more eloquence than wisdom."

"Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have."

"Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt... We shall not fail or falter we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job."

"Here Churchill repeats with approval a statement he had first made in January, 1930 "at a meeting at the Cannon Street Hotel." "Sooner or later you will have to crush Gandhi and the Indian Congress and all they stand for.""

"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 is the salient fact which distinguishes the English Revolution from all others: that those who wielded irresistible physical force were throughout convinced that it could give them no security. Nothing is more characteristic of the English people than their instinctive reverence even in rebellion for law and tradition. Deep in the nature of the men who had broken the King?s power was the conviction that law in his name was the sole foundation on which they could build."

"History is written by the victors."

"Historians are apt to judge war ministers less by the victories achieved under their direction than by the political results which flowed from them. Judged by that standard, I am not sure that I shall be held to have done very well."

"History unfolds itself by strange and unpredictable paths. We have little control over the future; and none at all over the past."

"History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fate may play, we march always in the ranks of honor."

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

"History's villains are more easily recognized in retrospect. In an article published in 1935 and reprinted in 1937, Winston Churchill expressed a curious ambivalence towards the German chancellor prior to the outbreak of war: We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilization will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honor and peace of mind to the great Germanic nation. . . ."

"Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine, which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces. . . . So now this bloodthirsty guttersnipe must launch his mechanized armies upon new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation."

"How little can we foresee the consequences either of wise or unwise action, of virtue or of malice. Without this measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed."

"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. The effects are apparent in many countries, 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. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men."

"Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

"How fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave."

"How many have gone? How many more to go? The Admiralty is fast asleep and lethargy and inertia are the order of the day. However everybody seems delighted - so there is nothing to be said. No plans, no enterprise, no struggle to aid the general cause. Just sit still on the spacious throne and snooze."

"However we may dwell upon the difficulties of General Dyer during the Amritsar riots, upon the anxious and critical situation in the Punjab, upon the danger to Europeans throughout that province... one tremendous fact stands out ? I mean the slaughter of nearly 400 persons and the wounding of probably three to four times as many, at the Jallian Wallah Bagh on 13th April. That is an episode which appears to me to be without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire... It is an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation."