Power, prominence and a bit of a rebellious nature thrown in -- Winston Churchill quotes are definitely some of the most interesting you'll ever come across. For someone who was said to have a speech impediment, his words and message definitely did not suffer. This month, as we celebrate his birthday, let's remember Sir Winston Churchill with these 16 quotes.



1. "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

2. "A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him."

3. "Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things."

4. "There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion."

5. "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile -- hoping it will eat him last."

6. "Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened."

7. "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

8. "If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is 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."

9. "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."

10. "A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril."

11. "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

12. "Never give in -- never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

13. "The price of greatness is responsibility."

14. "The farther backward you can look, the further forward you are likely to see."

15. "Difficulties mastered are opportunities won."

16. "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."

So there you have it -- a glimpse inside the mind of an extraordinary man. Honor, courage, bravery -- think it's the stuff fairy tales are made of? Guess again. These 16 Winston Churchill quotes show us just how real they can be in the right man.