“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” — Winston Churchill
I read several, certainly not all, of Churchill's efforts. If I'm not mistaken, this was prominent in The Gathering Storm.
I always found Churchill to be the most compelling character in the 20th Century because he stepped into a void and held back the tide for 2+ years when there was no one there to help, he had zero chance to win and there wasn't anyone to go see about it.
I read somewhere that he was having dinner when an aide came and whispered to him that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. The gist of the story was that was the first good night's sleep he had in 2 years.