Winston Churchill Quotes

Can't' will be the epitaph of the British Empire - unless we wake up in time.

… there is a notion of exchanging Hong Kong for a more healthy colony.

The Second World War had a precipitating effect in that it discredited the empires, as well as bankrupting them. Not only could you no longer, if you were a colonial subject of France in Africa, look to France as a model of power and influence and civility after what had happened in the war. Nor could the French any longer afford to run their empire. And nor could the British, although they were not discredited in the way that the French were.

When I was young and the empire was beginning to disintegrate, the idea was absolutely unbelievable, particularly to children who'd been taught that the sun never set... that's what all my books are about, the end of empire.

You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires.

When I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires. You know, when people talk about the British Empire, they always forget that all the European countries had empires.

The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later, the vicious politics of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan.

I was born too late and missed the dream of empire. Its shadow, the Commonwealth, coincides with my life but rarely connected with it.

Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.

Who knows but that England may revive in New South Wales when it has sunk in Europe.

Margaret Thatcher inherited a country in transition. The British Empire was still a considerable entity well into the 20th century.

Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role in the world.

The Turkish Empire has just committed suicide.

I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

Whereas the British were generally quite open about the fact that they were running an empire, few Americans politicians today would use the “e” word as anything other than a term of abuse.

The jury is still out, and may always be out over whether the Britain benefited from the Empire or not.

We cannot menace the peace of a single continental hamlet no matter how great our supreme navy may become but the … whole fortunes of our race and empire … would perish and be utterly swept away if our naval supremacy were to be impaired. It is the British navy which makes Great Britain a great power.

It can be considered a rule that the probable duration of an Empire may be prognosticated by the degree to which its rulers believe in their own propaganda.

If the resistance of the Americans is successful, this memorable epoch will reduce England to a point where she will no longer cause disquietude to France, whose consideration on the Continent will increase in proportion to the enfeeblement of the British Empire.

His Majesty’s dominions, on which the sun never sets.

These different blocs in the Turkish Empire...always conspired against Turkey; because of the hostility of these native peoples, Turkey has lost province after province - Greece, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Egypt, and Tripoli. In this way, the Turkish Empire has dwindled almost to nothing.

The Crown as a symbol of sovereignty encourages British Canadians to ignore their own failure to build a united nation by allowing them an illusory participation in a history and a greatness not properly theirs.

This [American] empire will not last. No empire does. If empires lasted, the whole world would be speaking ancient Persian today.

From Tangiers to Alexandria, the entire African coast of the Mediterranean, with the exception of the great Libyan desert, belongs either to France or to England. Italy, the Mediterranean nation par excellence, is virtually excluded from the control of the Mediterranean; she is imprisoned and besieged in her own ocean.

Postcolonial critics are, I suspect, wrong when they argue that the mass of British people still mourn the loss of empire. But Britain's politicians - and its Foreign Office - have found it hard to adjust to the loss, not so much of onetime colonies as of the global clout the colonies once afforded.