British Quotes

If the British Fleet were lost or captured, the Atlantic might be dominated by Germany, a power hostile to our way of life, controlling in that event most of the ships and shipbuilding facilities of Europe.

The British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland.

I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major's Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

The British press have written some nasty and spiteful things about the way I look which used to affect me quite badly when it was new to me but luckily, I've learned to ignore the comments. why do they even care about how I look?

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.

British people would die for their right to drink themselves to death.

Of all the memorable phrases that have been minted and mobilised to describe modern British royalty, 'constitutional monarchy' is virtually the only one which seemes to have neither been anticipated nor invented by Walter Bagehot. It was he who insisted that 'a princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and as such it rivets mankind'; and he who warned that the monarchy's 'mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic'.

In fiction, I have been on a Zweig kick. In England over December, I noticed that many British newspapers' year-end recommenders were praising the Pushkin Press for reissuing several works by Stefan Zweig, a brilliant Austrian writer whose work brings to mind that of his compatriot Joseph Roth... these fictions are a treat of prewar European literature

If people don't like Marxism, they should blame the British Museum.

The successful sale of British Telecom... reveals a vast and untapped yearning among ordinary people for a direct stake in the ownership of British enterprise. Investment in shares has begun to take its place, with ownership of a home and either a bank or building society deposit, as a way for ordinary people to participate in enterprise and wealth creation. We are seeing the birth of people's capitalism.

To win more medals at Beijing is just fantastic, and British cycling has come a huge way in the last few years.

British Beatitudes! ... Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs, battleships, buggery and bishops.

Both my parents are English and came out to Australia in 1967. I was born the following year. My parents, and immigrants like them, were known as '£10 poms.' Back then, the Australian government was trying to get educated British people and Canadians - to be honest, educated white people - to come and live in Australia.

I enter a whorehouse with the same interest as I do the British museum or the Metropolitan - in the same spirit of curiosity. Here are the works of man, here is an art of man, here is the eternal pursuit of gold and pleasure. I couldn't be more sincere. This doesn't mean that if I go to La Scala in Milan to hear Carmen I want to get up on the stage and participate. I do not. Neither do I always participate in a fine representative national whorehouse - but I must see it as a spectacle, an offering, a symptom of a nation.

In the field of snobbery, Australia is an underdeveloped country; even a few British ex-colonies, regarded as under developed in all other respects, could export a great deal of snobbery to Australia and still have enough to spare for their own, internal needs.

You see, before I became prime minister, the Australian prime minister only attended ever two meetings in the world: the British Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the South Pacific Forum.

It had always been a British preoccupation to hold this mile record.

Aspects of life here civility, courtesy, coziness have always bound Britons to their country . . . They are part of the British myth, along with lovely countryside, dogs and horses, rose gardens, the Armada, the Battle of Britain.

British scientists have demonstrated that cigarettes can harm your children. Fair enough. Use an ashtray!

It is the clash of two different worlds that makes British-ness unique - we have an aristocratic, noble history, but it is always contrasted with something rebellious.

I'm proud of being British, but I think our aristocracy is overrated.

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.

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.

Now, the United States' response, the western response to this is a continuation of the appeasement that was started back in the '50s with Eisenhower when Iran seized western oil companies. The Americans, the British, and the Israelis, as I remember, launched an attack to try to reclaim it and - or at least the British and the Israelis did and Eisenhower vetoed it.

You can't anticipate history. It's only when you look back you see what the Romans did, and what various other empires did, what the British Empire did. We're now beginning to see the long shadow that it created, so one must be hopeful and say that what's going on in Asia, that what's going on in the Middle East, that all these various areas of conflict, that they will pass and move onto another area. But it would seem that the natural order of things is there is this cyclic behavior of destruction followed by a calm period.

The British press isn't as vicious as it used to be, and these days it's sort of cool to care again. Everyone loves an everyman anthem.

I have two Filipino nannies who have British passport and not me. I don't need British passport. When you were running around in an animal skin, my ancestors were building the pyramids.

We [Americans] inherited British law, which is like the new "reforms" that are being made now, in the sense that people are permanently entrapped in debt, if they once fall into bankruptcy. The reason that the law was changed in American history - the whole early period of the formation of the country was moving away from British law into a law that is generated here and that conforms to the sense of what is appropriate here.

Pound was silly, bumptious, extravagantly generous, annoying, exhibitionistic; Eliot was sensible, cautious, retiring, soothing, shy. Though Pound wrote some brilliant passages, on the whole he was a failure as a poet (sometimes even in his own estimation); Eliot went from success to success and is still quoted--and misquoted--by thousands of people who have never read him. Both men were expatriates by choice, but Eliot renounced his American citizenship and did his best to become assimilated with his fellow British subjects, while Pound always remained an American in exile.

The people of the Falkland Islands, like the people of the United Kingdom, are an island race. They are few in number but they have the right to live in peace, to choose their own way of life and to determine their own allegiance. They way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. It is the wish of the British people and the duty of Her Majesty's Government to do everything that we can to uphold that right. That will be our hope and our endeavour, and, I believe, the resolve, of every Member of this House.

in order to confer their lost Nationality upon exiled Jews , the British with the help of the League of Nations began to rehabilitate the old Hebrew country, Palestine, with its long lost children. The Jews had maintained their race, religion, culture and language; and all they wanted was their natural territory to complete their Nationality. The reconstruction of the Hebrew Nation on Palestine is just an affirmation of the fact that Country, Race, Religion, Culture and Language must exist unequivocally together to form the Nation idea.

I think American guys tend to be a bit more forward, a bit more chatty and open than the Brits. The Brits seem to have a darker sense of humor, though I have met some Americans who have adopted bits of the British dry sense of humor as well.

I studied in Britain and spent great moments of my life there as a student living in Belsize Park. I admire the British trait of the stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. My wife studied in Britain too and both of us have many friends there.

...should We consent to an order of Cincinnati consisting of all the Officers of the Army & Citizens of Consiquence in the united States; how easy the Transition from a Republican to any other Form of Government, however despotic! & how rediculous to exchange a british Administration, for one that would be equally tyrannical, perhaps much more so? this project may answer the End of Courts that aim at making Us subservient to their political purposes, but can never be consistent with the Dignity or Happiness of the united States.

I love 'Monty Python,' 'Black Adder,' 'Fawlty Towers'. I'm a huge fan of British comedy.

I was offered and accepted a part in 'A Few Best Men,' and then the Australian actor's union argued that there were too many British actors. And the director decided to lose me.

The British Government and the Irish Government have accepted very clearly the Mitchell Report.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

I like everything European. Even my GPS has a British accent - it's way less annoying than the American one.

All these stuff she's done before - the rosary, the deep thoughts, the faux British accent. It's the same thing over and over. She's be so much better if she just retired, and I like Madonna.

You ever mix two different groups of friends? That can be stressful. You always feel like you have to prep 'em. You're like, "These people over here, uh, they don't think I drink. And don't be thrown by my British accent."

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

Here's a viewer's guide to BP media briefings. Whenever you hear someone with a British accent talking about this on behalf of British Petroleum they are not telling you the truth. That's the bottom-line.

A lot of American actors when they do Shakespeare put on a phoney English accent and it drives me crazy. You're always fighting against the idea that only the British know how to do Shakespeare.

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.

That could sound arrogant, I guess, but sometimes I feel like I have a bit of a Zelig thing. I'll blend in wherever. I'm from the South, so I'll have a Southern accent when I'm home. But if I'm up here in New York, I have a British accent.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

The attempt to regulate relations between people too closely, by means of the law, in the name of an abstraction such as equality, leads to both absurdity and cruelty. The British are fast turning themselves into a nation of slaves, where even the slave-masters are not free.

In his fierce, bold determination to see the lives of modern-day slaves up close, Benjamin Skinner reminds me of the British abolitionist of two hundred years ago, Zachary Macaulay, who once traveled on a slave ship across the Atlantic, taking notes. Skinner goes everywhere, from border crossings to brothels to bargaining sessions with dealers in human beings, to bring us this vivid, searing account of the wide network of human trafficking and servitude which spans today's globe.

There are important arguments to be made about the relative merits of an hereditary or an elected head of state: but not at the level of the human frailties of particular monarchs or presidents. No one seriously contends that the American presidency should be abolished because Bill Clinton is a self-confessed adulterer. So why should the abolition of the British monarchy be contemplated because the same is true of Prince Charles?