Op 24 januari was de legendarische Britse staatsman Winston Churchill 50 jaar dood. Een intelligente en belezen man die absoluut niet verlegen zat om een confronterende uitspraak meer of minder. Churchill was eerste minister van het Verenigd Koninkrijk in volle WOII en later opnieuw, tussen 1951 en 1955. Zijn belangrijkste verwezenlijking was echter de grote rol die hij speelde in de ondergang van Hitler en het nazisme. Alsof dit op zich nog niet genoeg was, slaagde hij er in 1953 in om de Nobelprijs Literatuur in de wacht te slepen omwille van “his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values”. Wie onderstaande quotes erop naleest, zal de uitreikers van de prijs enkel gelijk kunnen geven als ze hem prijzen om zijn briljante retoriek. Een strijdlustig karakter met kloten aan zijn lijf en zijn hart op de juiste plaats. Liepen er maar meer van dat soort politici rond, de politiek zou er ongetwijfeld heel anders uitzien.
- “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”
- “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”
- “In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity.”
- “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
- “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
- Lady Astor: “Winston, if I were your wife I’d put poison in your coffee.” – Winston Churchill: “Nancy, if I were your husband I’d drink it.”
- “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.”
- “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
- “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
- “If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
- “This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.”
- “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.”
- “Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.”
- “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.”
- “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.”
- When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.”
- “If you are going through hell, keep going.”
- “Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.”
- “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
- “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.”
- “If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”
- “We (The British) have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.”
- “You ask, What is our policy? I will say; ‘It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.’ You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”
- “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 made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour!’”
- “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.”
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