Winston Churchill

Posted October 2, 2007, 10:43 pm by Growing Bolder


Winston Churchill
Born: Nov. 30, 1874
Died: Jan. 24, 1965

Wiped out by the stock market crash of the Great Depression, Winston Churchill, 64, put his estate up for sale in 1938. He went on to become one of the most influential personalities of the 20th century.

Sir Winston Churchill was an English statesman best known as the Prime Minister who led England during World War II in the years 1940 through 1945. Churchill was a politician, a soldier, an artist and one of the most influential personalities of the 20th century.  At age 66, as Germany was about to invade France, Neville Chamberlain resigned as prime minister, and King George VI tapped Churchill for the position. At the conclusion of the war, he was soundly defeated and left office.

After the Age of Seventy

• At age 77, he returned to power as Prime Minister, serving until the age of 80 in 1955.
• At age 78, he won the Nobel Prize for literature for his many historical works, including his six-volume history of the Second World War.
• At age 78, he received the insignia of the Order of the Garter.
• At age 88, he became the first person in history to receive honorary U.S. citizenship by President John F. Kennedy.

Churchill served his country for 69 years from 1895 to 1964, and his countrymen's affection for him has withstood the test of time. In 2002, he was voted the greatest-ever Briton in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

Quotes

• "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
• "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
• "All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope."
• "Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter."
• "Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential."
• "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."
  
• "Never, never, never give up."
• "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
• "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."
  

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