Browsing Topic Best British Quotes

I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race… If there be a God, I think that what he would like me to do is paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible…

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.

I started moving away from poets like Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane and started reading poets like, again, Karl Shapiro, Howard Nemerov, Philip Larkin, and the British poets who were imported through that important anthology put together by Alvarez – and those would include Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes. And I think these poets gave me assurance that there were other ways to write besides the rather involuted style of high modernism whose high priests were Pound, Eliot and Stevens, and Crane perhaps.

I am Scottish. I am also British.

Every empire suffers from hubris, arrogance and condescension, and therefore a moral blindness. That’s true of the American empire, it was true of the British Empire earlier, and it will certainly be true of the Chinese Empire in the future.

People are always asking me what my lyrics mean. Does it mean this, does it mean that, that’s all anybody wants to know. F**k them, darling. I say what any decent poet would say if you dared ask him to analyze his work: If you see it, dear, then it’s there. … I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics. … I was never too keen on the British music press. They’ve called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn’t write our own songs.

Traditional British desserts with lots of custard are my biggest weakness – I particularly love the puds at St. John restaurant in East London.

I think British men build up the idea of us French girls having some magic extra sex appeal so much, they lose their heads. I can’t really understand the whole thing – but it makes me laugh. It’s such a cliche to think all French girls are well dressed, elegant, sophisticated and sexy. Some are utter slobs, I promise you that.

We all sat there laughing and sipping tea peacefully, an infidel and representatives from three warring sects of Islam. And I thought if we can get along this well, we can accomplish anything. The British policy was ‘divide and conquer.’ But I say ‘unite and conquer.

When you have energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum, both of which are perhaps represented in this room, saying there is a problem with excess carbon dioxide emission, I think we ought to listen.

While we remember that we are contending against brothers and fellow subjects, we must also remember that we are contending in this crisis for the fate of the British Empire.

The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.

Paul Revere was warning the British about gun control, and George Washington apparently was crossing the Delaware to bomb an abortion clinic.

What did it mean to be called lord? I’ll assume you’ve never had the honor, since I doubt any of you happen to be British royalty. (And, if by chance you are, then let me say, Hello, Your Majesty! Welcome to my stupid book. Can I borrow some cash?)

David Lloyd George had been to Germany, and been so dazzled by the Führer that he compared him to George Washington. Hitler was a ‘born leader’, declared the befuddled former British Prime Minister. He wished that Britain had ‘a man of his supreme quality at the head of affairs in our country today’. This from the hero of the First World War! The man who had led Britain to victory over the Kaiser!

Why don’t I like you?Because you think I’m an asshole, and I’m not really, I’m just British and, well, you’re not.

The US in some ways has been the best. Who figured out shale gas? Although that wasn’t a good thing [for CO2 levels], it was very innovative. It’s led to low-cost energy. Who figured out nuclear power? Largely the United States. Once you get past the steam engine, which is mostly British, then the US has been at the center of most of the energy things that have happened.

When historians get to write the truth about this completely unnecessary referendum [Brexit] they won’t say it was a vote demanded by the British people to decide their national destiny. They will say it was the final battle in a decades-long Tory Civil War, at the heart of which was a fight to the death between two Old Etonians, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, for the hollow crown. A sort of Eton Wall Game. Where the poorest are put up against the wall and shot.

All I’m saying is we got plenty of Texans, and people from Montana, and New Jersey, and Wyoming, or Kansas City. We got plenty of actors. So we don’t need some cat from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme, or whatever the hell it is, playing people from Montana. And in the reverse, they got plenty of people from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme that they don’t need our asses coming over there trying to do British accents.

Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party’s gone.

Iranian filmmakers are not passive. They fight whenever they can, as creative expression means a lot to them. The restrictions and censorship in Iran are a bit like the British weather: one day it’s sunny, the next day it’s raining. You just have to hope you walk out into the sunshine.

I find it strange that Gisela Gschaider a 1974 immigrant from Germany is on the brexit panel telling us British what we should do .

If the deaf are to hear, the sound has to be very loud. When we dropped the bomb, it was not our intention to kill anybody. We have bombed the British Government. The British must quit India and make her free.

My point is that this Potter business has legs. It will run and run, and we must be utterly mad, as a country, to leave it to the Americans to make money from a great British invention. I appeal to the children of this country and to their Potter-fiend parents to write to Warner Bros and Universal, and perhaps, even, to the great J K herself. Bring Harry home to Britain-and if you want a site with less rainfall than Rome, with excellent public transport, and strong connections to Harry Potter, I have just the place.

Lewis [Hamilton] is a hero in the UK. The British love Formula One. Sebastian (Vettel) is also not doing much for F1. People hardly recognize him on the street.

The only silver lining I can find is that British accents aren’t sexy anymore.

There’s definitely a pattern of great British shows that get reinvented in America and do really well here, but I think ‘Torchwood’ is a bit different. It’s more of a hybrid that doesn’t exist as a reinvention.

I must have just dreamed that about Liverpool playing 3-4-3. What do people think that was, a bit of luck? A British coach playing 3-4-3? A foreign coach doing that would be a tactical genius. I imagine people think I fell into that system through a stroke of luck or something… it took some thought. I didn’t just throw them out there.

In various talk th’ instructive hours they past, Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last; One speaks the glory of the British queen, And one describes a charming Indian screen; A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes; At every word a reputation dies.

Ultimately, imperialism made even the British working classes suffer. This is a point which the British working classes found quite difficult to swallow, but they did, actually.

I had good innings, as the British say. I wrote for 38 years at the top of my form, and I wanted to quit on a high note.

I got a tooth bust by somebody who decided they didn’t like me and I thought the moustache hid a scar on my lip. It’s true that people were told facial hair was not appreciated by the British public, but I just decided to keep the moustache.

I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we’ve had.

One of the things about being raised British in Africa is that you get this double whammy of toughness. The continent in place itself made you quite tough. And then you’ve got this British mother whose entire being rejects ‘coddling’ in case it makes you too soft. So there’s absolutely nothing standing between you and a fairly rough experience.

I listened to a lot of tapes of British theatre actresses and tried to learn from them. As Americans, we don’t have such a gift with language.