Winston Churchill for Traders and Analysts

Twenty five quotes from Winston Churchill for traders and financial analysts:

1. I love this war. I know it’s smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can’t help it — I enjoy every second of it. (A letter to a friend, 1916)

2. I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact. (The Story of the Malakand Field Force, 1898)

3. True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

4. The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is. (Speech in the House of Commons, May 17, 1916)

5. Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. (The Prodigal Project : Book I)

6. It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time. (Speech in the House of Commons, February 27, 1945)

7. It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

8. The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

9. However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

10. For myself, I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else. (Speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in London, November 1954)

11. Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be made like this? (Letter to his wife, during the build-up to World War I)

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

13. Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and the glory of the climb. (“Painting as a Pastime”, the Strand Magazine, December 1921)

14. No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle. (My Early Life, 1930)

15. I wonder whether any other generation has seen such astounding revolutions of data and values as those through which we have lived. Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent and vital, has lasted. Everything I was
sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened. (The Fourth Hussars)

16. Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, ‘it is the quality which guarantees all others.’ (Great Contemporaries, 1937)

17. I must point out … that the British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst, and like to be told that they are very likely to get much worse in the future and must prepare themselves for further reverses. (Speech in the House of Commons, June 10, 1941)

18. You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

19. The maxim ‘Nothing avails but perfection’ may be spelt shorter: ‘Paralysis.’ (Note to General Ismay, December 6, 1942)

20. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

21. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.

22. War is mainly a catalogue of blunders. (The Second World War, Volume III )

23. Of course, when you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise. (The Second World War, Volume V)

24. Qualities of a Politician [or economist/pundit/forecaster?]: “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.” (Newspaper interview, 1902)

25. Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer

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Source:

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