A fanatic is one who cannot change his mind and won't change the subject.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

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

Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame and will get war.

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.

For myself I am an optimist -- it does not seem to be much use being anything else.

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

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

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like to be taught.

I am not sure I should have dared to start; but I am sure I should not have dared to stop.

If you destroy a free market you create a black market. If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

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.

I have always been a bit shy of the really extemporary speech ever since I heard it said that an extemporary speech was not worth the paper it was written on.

In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used frequently to take my advice.

In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Goodwill.

I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

Let your advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

Odd things animals. All dogs look up to you. All cats look down to you. Only a pig looks at you as an equal.

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.

Saving is a very fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you.

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.

Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground..

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.

There is no working middle course in wartime.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

We have no lasting friends, no lasting enemies, only lasting interests.

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.

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