Best British Quotes

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 Empireearlier, and it will certainly be true of the Chinese Empire in the future.

I am Scottish. I am also British.

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

The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.

I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British instead of the other way around, I might have gotten here on my own.

I have not become the Kings First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

More than 80 per cent of the British casualties of the Great War were English. More than 80 per cent of the taxation is paid by the English taxpayers. We are entitled to mention these facts, and to draw authority and courage from them.

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell said that philosophy went downhill after Democritus and did not recover until the Renaissance.

It’s estimated that by 2030 there will be virtually no unskilled jobs in the British economy.

I can make your tears fall down like the showers that are British.

The loss of India would mark and consummate the downfall of the British Empire. That great organism would pass at a stroke out of life into history.From such a catastrophe there could be no recovery.

I have to say as an actor I have been inspired by so many British actors throughout the years.

That was the year the British decided to get out and sell everything. So I immediately held an election. I knew the people will be dead scared. And I won my bet big-time. The gullible fools!

I didn’t like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I’m trying to get back to.

And so I was very grateful that I didn’t do the British stiff upper lip, but I went straight to a therapist. And she was wonderful and helpful, and I went for about two years.

It is a fallacy to believe that a Republic of any kind can be won through the shackled Free State. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The Free State is British created and serves British Imperialist interests. It is the buffer erected between British Capitalism and the Irish Republic.

All the talk about the so-called unspeakable horror of early capitalism can be refuted by a single statistic: precisely in these years in which British capitalism developed, precisely in the age called the Industrial Revolution in England, in the years from 1760 to 1830, precisely in those years the population of England doubled.

I have never, ever sought validation from the arbiters of British poetic taste.

When my father arrived in Kenya, he had found the Kikuyu way of life similar to that of the British at the time the Romans invaded England 2,000 years ago.

London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world… It’s got everything you want, really.

I have been long associated with British music. I have favoured it as my alternate music next to American.

I’ve talked a lot about the discipline and high, high skills of the British actors as seen from my Danish point of view. But I also have to say that Peter is unusually intelligent, humble and a good friend to everyone.

The French manner of hunting is gentlemanlike; ours is only for bumpkins and bodies. The poor beasts here are pursued and run downby much greater beasts than themselves; and the true British fox-hunter is most undoubtedly a species appropriated and peculiar to this country, which no other part of the globe produces.

Britons seem to have given up on assimilating their Muslim population, with many British elites patting themselves on the back for their tolerance and multiculturalism.

Would a special relationship between the United States and the British Commonwealth be inconsistent with our overriding loyalty to the world organization?

In 1966 I became president of the British Computer Society.

America has had an influence on me, as has going out with a Cuban-American guy and having lots of American friends. But I am still fundamentally British and speak with a British accent and feel very English.

British business is disappointed that the MPC felt unable to act more boldly to counter the worsening economic circumstances and the sharp slowdown in the pace of economic activity,.

The Canadian dialect of English . . . seems roughly to be the result of applying British syntax to an American vocabulary.

I loved history, particularly of the British, American and Old Testament kind.

Commanders and senior officers should die with troops. The honour of the British Empire and the British Army is at stake.

I seemed to belong to three countries: I had an apartment in Paris, a house in Hollywood, and when I married British theater director Peter Hall, I moved to London.

The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive.

It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain; and I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.