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Kindle Notes & Highlights
‘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.’
‘Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others change their principles for the sake of their party.’
On a fellow Liberal MP joining the Socialist Party: ‘It is the only time I’ve ever seen a rat swimming towards a sinking ship.’
‘I could not possibly eat a bird that I have known socially.’
‘We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm.’
‘An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping that it will eat him last.’
When asked by a young MP how he could have put more fire into the speech he had just made: ‘What you should have done is put the speech into the fire.’
wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better if he had never lived.’
On Clement Attlee: ‘A sheep in sheep’s clothing.’
‘An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened Attlee got out.’
‘He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.’
On T. E. Lawrence: ‘He was not in complete harmony with the normal.’
On Churchill’s eightieth birthday, in 1954, a young man was sent to take his photograph. Full of awe, he breathed, ‘Sir Winston, it is wonderful to take your photograph on your eightieth birthday and I do look forward to taking it again on your hundredth birthday.’ Kindly, the great man replied,‘Young man, you appear to me to be in good health and sound in wind and limb. So I see no reason why you should not.’
am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.’
Nancy Astor: ‘If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee.’ Churchill: ‘Nancy, if I were your husband, I would drink it.’
‘We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we are young. The young sow wild oats, the old grow sage.’
‘The worst quarrels only arise when both sides are equally in the right and in the wrong.’
‘Where there is a great deal of free speech, there is always a certain amount of foolish speech.’
‘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.’
…As the man whose mother-in-law had died in Brazil replied, when asked how the remains should be disposed of: “Embalm, cremate, and bury. Take no risks!”’
‘Do not let plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.’
‘Luckily, life is not so easy as all that; otherwise we should get to the end too quickly.’
