Christopher > Christopher's Quotes

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them, or learn to bear them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“If any man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“All things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Everything is banal in experience, fleeting in duration, sordid in content; in all respects the same today as generations now dead and buried have found it to be.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Adapt yourself to the life you have been given; and truly love the people with whom destiny has surrounded you”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Unhappy am I because this has happened to me.- Not so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“A person's worth is measured by the worth of what he values.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me.
But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one's own self-deception and ignorance.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

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

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Never, never, never give in!”
― Winston S. Churchill

“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.”
― Winston Churchill

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“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 honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
― Winston Churchill, Never Give In! The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches

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

[On British Labour politician Stafford Cripps.]”
― Winston S. Churchill, Wealth, War and Wisdom

“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. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
― Winston Churchill, The River War

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop."

[New Statesman interview, 7 January 1939]”
― Winston Churchill

“Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.”
― Winston Churchill

“A small lie needs a bodyguard of bigger lies to protect it.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”
― Winston S. Churchill