Winston Churchill, radio broadcast, London (October 8, 1951); Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963 (1974), ed. Robert Rhodes James, vol. 8, p. 8257.

I do not hold that we should rearm in order to fight. I hold that we should rearm in order to parley.

— Winston Churchill on National security

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I do not hold that we should rearm in order to fight. I hold that we should rearm in order to parley." in the context of "Winston Churchill, radio broadcast, London (October 8, 1951); Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963 (1974), ed. Robert Rhodes James, vol. 8, p. 8257." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "National security" (Quotes: Sorted alphabetically by author or source) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed February 05, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Winston Churchill

About Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill KG OM CH TD FRS PC (November 30, 1874 – January 24, 1965) was a British statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was a Sandhurst-educated soldier, a Nobel Prize-winning writer and historian, a prolific painter, and one of the longest-serving politicians in British history. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955, though he was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.