It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Winston ChurchillRead
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creating something takes time and effort, while destruction can happen instantly and without careful thought.
This quote by Winston Churchill emphasizes the contrasting nature of creation and destruction. It points out that constructing something meaningful or valuable often requires sustained effort and dedication over a long period, while the act of dismantling or ruining that creation can occur impulsively and in an instant, highlighting the fragility of human endeavors.
Themes
CreationDestructionEffortTimeFragility
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of long-term projects, this quote can illustrate the value of perseverance.
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
In order to make a change, I have to exist in a traditionally homophobic space such as hip-hop. If I were to just be this queer rapper who only spoke to queer kids... I don't think I could as effectively make a change for another young, black, queer kid growing up in Texas.
Kevin AbstractRead
Until white people understand that racism is embedded in everything, including our consciousness and socialisation, then we cannot go forward.
Robin DiangeloRead
Be transparent as wind, be as possible and relentless and dangerous, be what moves things forward without needing to leave a mark, be part of this collection of molecules that begins somewhere unknown and can't help but keep rising. Rising.Rising. Rising.
Eve EnslerRead
Of course it’s the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they’re happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly—all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.
Clive BarkerRead
Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
E. O. WilsonRead
But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul, to the man-animals. He could not immediately forego his wild heritage and his memories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away.
Jack LondonRead