The Gathering Storm Quotes

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm

“Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts ... genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation ... the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality ...though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries [WWII]”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm

“Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm

“It is my purpose, as one who lived and acted in these days, first to show how easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented; how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous...”
― Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm

“It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them.”
― Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm

“All was there—the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm

“the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous;”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 1948

“I have stated that a democracy is always two years behind the dictator.”
― Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm

“We shall see how the counsels of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger; how the middle course adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bull's-eye of disaster.”
― Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm

“When Marshal Foch heard of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles he observed with singular accuracy: “This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be 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.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm

“Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of Communism.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“Cromwell’s imperious words to the Long Parliament: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“The worst quarrels only arise when both sides are equally in the right and in the wrong.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“Virtuous motives, trammelled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation, obvious lack of intellectual vigour in both leaders of the British Coalition Government, marked ignorance of Europe and aversion from its problems in Mr. Baldwin, the strong and violent pacifism which at this time dominated the Labour-Socialist Party, the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality, the failure and worse than failure of Mr. Lloyd George, the erstwhile great war-time leader, to address himself to the continuity of his work, the whole supported by overwhelming majorities in both Houses of Parliament: all these constituted a picture of British fatuity and fecklessness which, though devoid of guile, was not devoid of guilt, and, though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries which, even so far as they have unfolded, are already beyond comparison in human experience.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“They have destroyed your weapons,” he had told the generals, in effect. “But these weapons would in any case have become obsolete before the next war. That war will be fought with brand-new ones, and the army which is least hampered with obsolete material will have a great advantage.”
― Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“Thereafter mighty forces were adrift; the void was open, and into that void after a pause there strode a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast – Corporal Hitler.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm

“compulsory duty on every male German reaching the age of twenty. For six months he would have to serve his country, constructing roads, building barracks, or draining marshes, thus fitting him physically and morally for the crowning duty of a German citizen, service with the armed forces.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 1948

“change is the best kind of rest.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 1948

“Of course the introduction of conscription at this stage did not give us an army. It only applied to the men of twenty years of age; they had still to be trained; and after they had been trained they had still to be armed.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 1948

“All comes out even at the end of the day, and all will come out yet more even when all the days are ended.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“History, which, we are told, is mainly the record of the crimes, follies, and miseries of mankind,”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“Very soon they will have to choose on the one hand between economic and financial collapse or internal upheaval, and on the other a war which could have no other object,”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“We must regard as deeply blameworthy before history the conduct not only of the British National and mainly Conservative Government, but of the Labour-Socialist and Liberal Parties, both in and out of office, during this fatal period. Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation, obvious lack of intellectual vigour in both leaders of the British Coalition Government, marked ignorance of Europe and aversion from its problems in Mr. Baldwin, the strong and violent pacifism which at this time dominated the Labour-Socialist Party, the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality, the failure and worse than failure of Mr. Lloyd George,”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“Ingratitude towards their great men,” says Plutarch, “is the mark of strong peoples.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“The prejudice of the Americans against monarchy, which Mr. Lloyd George made no attempt to counteract, had made it clear to the beaten Empire that it would have better treatment from the Allies as a republic than as a monarchy. Wise policy would have crowned and fortified the Weimar Republic with a constitutional sovereign in the person of an infant grandson of the Kaiser, under a Council of Regency.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“I have adhered to my rule of never criticising any measure of war or policy after the event unless I had before expressed publicly or formally my opinion or warning about it.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

“Thereafter mighty forces were adrift, the void was open, and into that void after a pause there strode a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast—Corporal Hitler.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1