My 19 Favorite Churchill Quotes

My favorite non-divine historical figure is Pope St. John Paul II (I'm taking Jesus out because it's not worth comparing anybody else to him).  He was the pope for the first 21 years of my life.  Thursday was the tenth anniversary of his death.  I remember the day he died pretty well.  We knew it was coming, but it still hurt to know that he was gone.  I think I found out that he died on ESPN.com.  It was a Saturday and I was in my first semester at Notre Dame.  I went to the vigil mass at the basilica.  I hadn't planned on going to mass until Sunday, but I had to go.  It was really crowded.  I remember getting up at some ridiculous hour six days later to watch his funeral.  I was very excited when he was finally canonized last year.  He's right in the running for my second favorite saint.  Mary is number one.  John the Apostle is right up there.  I'm a big fan of Paul also.  John and Paul are kind of two sides of sainthood.  We never really hear about John doing anything wrong.  There are plenty of saints like that.  Paul, on the other hand, was kind of a scumbag (when he was Saul).  And then he became one of the most important saints in the history of the Church.  He should be an inspiration for most people.  I like John Paul II so much because I got to share this earth with him for 21 years and he was the most important person in the Church during that time.

Anyway, after John Paul II, my next two favorite historical figures are George Washington and Winston Churchill.  I have Washington ranked behind Lincoln as a president, but I still think he's the greatest American ever.  My first blog post was inspired by quotes from Winston Churchill and Vincent Antonelli.  With the three year anniversary of my blog coming up, I decided to rank my favorite Churchill quotes.  There are so many good ones.  Here we go in reverse order:

19. "From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."

18. "There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true."

17. "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

16. "My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best."

15. "We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English."

14. "If you are going through hell, keep going."

13. "A lady came up to me one day and said 'Sir! You are drunk', to which I replied 'I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly."

12. "Always remember, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."

11. "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the 

inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

10. "Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong."

9. "This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end, this is just perhaps the end of the beginning."

8. "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

7. "Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

6. "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

5. "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

4. "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 and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a 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, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."

3. "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."

2. "You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is 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."

1. "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

There's so much there.  I can't even explain why I like all of them.  But if Churchill was American, he would have been a great football coach.  Churchill is the Knute Rockne of world leaders.  He is an honorary American citizen, an honor that he deservedly was given in 1962.  (But how did it take until 2002 for the Marquis de Lafayette to be named an honorary citizen?  He should have been the first one).  Fortunately, he was a British politician when the world needed him.  Winston Churchill, more than any other person during World War II, helped save the world from evil.