It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Winston ChurchillRead
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Dictators maintain control through fear and oppression, but their power is precarious.
This quote highlights the dangerous position of dictators who, despite their apparent power, live in constant fear of losing control. They rely on oppressive means to maintain authority, yet their ability to sustain this power is always at risk, much like a rider on a hungry tiger that could turn on them at any moment.
Themes
PowerDictatorshipControlFearOppression
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about authoritarian regimes, one might reference this quote to highlight the fragility of tyrannical power.
More from Winston Churchill
All quotes →The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there's no limit to the power it can generate.
Winston ChurchillRead
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
Winston ChurchillRead
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
Winston ChurchillRead
Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.
Winston ChurchillRead
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Winston ChurchillRead
Similar quotes
The people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.
Alexander HamiltonRead
Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful.
Otto Von BismarckRead
Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little. . . . We must strive for normalcy to reach stability.
Woodrow WilsonRead
Irish tory employers hid[e] their sweatshops behind orange flags, and Irish home rule landlords us[e] the green sunburst of Erin to cloak their rack-renting in the festering slums of our Irish towns.
James ConnollyRead
The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.
John C. CalhounRead
There is no week, nor day, nor hour, when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance. Tyranny may always enter—there is no charm or bar against it.
Margaret ThatcherRead