Plus vous saurez regarder loin dans le passé, plus vous verrez loin dans le futur.

Winston Churchill

« I have to come to think myself in the last lap of life that one should always look back upon the history of the past, study it and meditate upon it. Thus one learns the main line of advance…it is wrong to be bound by the events and commitments of the last few years, unless these are sound and compatible with the main historic line. I am sure the right course is to know as much as possible about all that has happened in the world, and then to act entirely upon the merits from day to day. »

• Letter to Lord Linlithgow (3 November 1937), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 886

« Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. »

• Speech in the House of Commons, June 18, 1940 « War Situation ».