The Wisdom of Winston Churchill 5

One mark of a great man is the power of making lasting impressions upon the people he  meets.

There is a precipitous on either side of you-- a precipitous of caution in the precipitous of over-daring.

They're the most disagreeable of people.... Their insincerity? Can you not feel a sense of disgust at the arrogant presumption of superiority of these people? Superiority of intellect! Then, when it comes to practice, down they fall with a wallop not only to the level of ordinary human beings but to a level which is even far below the average.

These very high intellectual persons who wake up every morning... see what they can find to demolish, to undermine or cast away.

Let them quit these gospels of envy, hate and malice. Let them eliminate them from their politics and programs. Let them abandon the utter fallacy, the grotesque, erroneous fatal blunder of believing that by limiting the enterprise of man, by riveting the shackles of false equality... they will increase the well-being of the world.

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes in to make this muddled world a better place to live in after we are gone?

The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation.... [T]he element of the unexpected and unforeseeable is that gives some of its relish and saves us from falling into the mechanical thralldom of the logicians.

Logic, like science, must be the servant and not the master of man.

To change your mind is one thing; to turn on those who have followed your previous advice is another.

Source: The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill: A Treasury of More Than 1,000 Quotations and Anecdotes (1994) by James C. Humes.