It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
From now on we shall bomb Germany on an ever-increasing scale, month by month, year by year, until the Nazi regime has either been exterminated by us or - better still - torn to pieces by the German people themselves.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a commitment to escalate military efforts against Germany until the defeat of the Nazi regime.
Winston Churchill's quote reflects the determination to intensify the bombing campaign against Germany during World War II, emphasizing the goal of not only defeating the Nazi regime through external military force but also inspiring internal uprising among the German populace. It highlights the strategic and moral stance of using overwhelming pressure to bring about change, either through direct intervention or through the self-liberation of the German people.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about military strategy during World War II, Churchill's quote can be used to emphasize the necessity of decisive action.
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.
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Similar quotes
I pray for no more youth To perish before its prime; That Revenge and iron-heated War May fade with all that has gone before Into the night of time.
Having traveled to parts of the world where war has done its usual nasty work on people's lives, I have come to develop a particular hatred for the shape, the look, the sound of the AK-47.
He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were.
What one Predator drone pilot described of his experience fighting in the Iraq war while never leaving Nevada: 'You're going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants. Then you get in the car and you drive home, and within 20 minutes you're sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework.'
A true war story is never moral.
This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.