Speech in the House of Commons, June 18, 1940 "War Situation" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1940/jun/18/war-situation#column_60.
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Source: Never Give In!: The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches
Context: Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us now. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.
“Let it be our endeavour, let it be our task, to keep alight the torch of imperial patriotism, to hold fast the affection and the confidence of our kinsmen across the seas; so that in every vicissitude of fortune the British Empire may present an unbroken front to all her foes, and may carry on even to distant ages the glorious traditions of the British flag.”
Speech entitled 'The True Conception of Empire' to the Royal Colonial Institute (31 March, 1897).
1890s
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Joseph Chamberlain 44
British businessman, politician, and statesman 1836–1914Related quotes
Speech at University of Durham to the Ashridge Fellowship, as quoted in The Times (3 December 1934); also in Christian Conservatives and the Totalitarian Challenge, 1933-40 by Philip Williamson, in The English Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 462 (June 2000)
1934
Early career years (1898–1929)
Source: Speech in Glasgow (9 February 1912), quoted in The Times (10 February 1912), p. 9
Broadcast, Radio Cologne, 8 April 1943.
Old England is our Home, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Speech in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104910
First term as Prime Minister