Scottish Quotes

I have several Scottish Terriers. I find them to be the most wonderful dogs.

I think the French agonise more about being French, I don't think English think about being English that much. I think the Scottish think about being Scottish and the Welsh think about being Welsh, but the English don't really care. But the French think about it all the time, it's an absolute preoccupation.

I've started looking at my own father a bit funny. He assures me, though, that I really am the son of a Scottish postman.

My mother's background was Scottish. She came from an old family, some of whom lived in upper New York State and some of whom had come over from Scotland.

The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th of March 1707 is hereby reconvened.

It's such a measure of your solidarity with Ed, that when you would give lectures, he would be wearing a tartan tie that matched. And I demanded that outfit, I thought it was so punk - her long skirt, she looked like a Scottish queen, so regal.

I wonder what Tommy Morris would have had to say to all this number 6-iron, number 12-iron, number 28-iron stuff. He probably wouldn't have said anything, just made one of those strange Scottish noises at the back of his throat like someone gargling.

When I started the Imagination Library in my hometown, I never dreamed that one day we would be helping Scottish kids.

Scottish Theatre's greatest success story of recent times.

I knew Richard E. Grant, and I went to him and said "Would you like to [play Kafka in the film]?" and he said yeah, and then suddenly I had all these people who were happy to come along. We got a little bit of money from Scottish Screen to pay for it. I got so many favors because I knew people in the business. I was in a remarkably good position. I got so many favors from people. I got the Monty Python technical people.

Stark looked strong and healthy and totally gorgeous. I was distracting myself by wondering what exactly Scottish guys did, or didn't, wear under those kilts when he turned to face me. His smile lit up his eyes. "I can practically hear you thinking.

It's hard for us sophisticates to believe, but the people my parents worked for were good people. They were socialists of the heart. They were Scottish upper class. I don't think they had political theories in the way my lefty friends in New York do but they did all the things that socialists do. My mother was the Jewish cook from Vienna and they would say, "Come and have dinner with us." I spent weekends with them. Who does that? This is Utopia.

Beautiful, Glorious Scotland, has spoilt me for every other country.

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.

The debate can be put in the form of the question: Resolved, that the best of money managers cannot be demonstrated to be able to deliver the goods of superior portfolio-selection performance. Any jury that reviews the evidence, and there is a great deal of relevant evidence, must at least come out with the Scottish verdict: Superior investment performance is unproved.

Scotland is one of my favourite places to perform: it's really something special. Scottish audiences are just so enthusiastic; their approach to dance music just feels similar to my own somehow.

The curse of Scottish literature is the lack of a whole language, which finally means the lack of a whole mind.

Being hapa, or more specifically, half-Japanese half-Euro mutt (English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, French, Welsh, German. . .in case you were wondering), has definitely helped shape who I am. It's very cool to get to identify and learn about all these unique cultures and I think it's helped put the world in perspective.

The proper drinking of Scotch whisky is more than indulgence: it is a toast to civilization, a tribute to the continuity of culture, a manifesto of man's determination to use the resources of nature to refresh mind and body and enjoy to the full the senses with which he has been endowed.

The acting I got into by doing what we call pantomime, when I was sixteen. And, there were loads of very pretty girls in the show. I realized; I found out very early on, that the lead comic gets the girl. So, that was cool. When I went to university, I studied Economic Social History. And drama. That kind of got me into it. My main passion was to make films. It was never to be an actor. At that time, there weren't many opportunities for a working class Scottish actor. It was kind of an English thing. And it required a certain mannered cerebral acting style that I couldn't relate to.

I did Scottish footballer of the year this year, attempted to do some comedy at that. Not the brightest people in the world. There were seven O-Levels in that room, and they were all mine.

Only a Scotsman can really survive a Scottish education.

Protestants are the more segmented group. Mainline churches - you have problems in the U.S., Europe, the Scottish Church, the Dutch Protestant Church, the state church in Norway. The evangelicals have been pro Israel, but a major effort is to bring them in on the Palestinian side. A huge problem and the problems are rising.

The mark of a Scot of all classes [is that] he ... remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation.

The scotch egg is such a Scottish food. It's as though a great Scottish chef said: I need a tasty snack. Let's take an egg... and wrap it in meat!! Makes it a bit harder.

I think Danny Boyle's got it in his head that we all still look too young (to do a 'Trainspotting' sequel.) But, I mean, I don't look like anyone I play, anyways, so I don't really know where that comes from. Because, you know, you change yourself for the roles. I'm actually not Scottish, either!

[Macbeth] is historically set in a place depicted by Shakespeare as brutal and violent, incredibly superstitious, and that's something that I do believe is Scottish.

Stirling, like a huge brooch, clasps Highlands and Lowlands together.

I thought it very strange, and very sad, that the fairy kingdom largely appears to be English. I thought it was time for some regional representation. And the Nac Mac Feegle are, well, they're like tiny little Scottish Smurfs who have seen Braveheart altogether too many times.

When I watched Braveheart I was in tears and I was rooting for the Scottish people

I'm not a tough guy or a good fighter at all. [Boxing] is just a great way to work out that's not boring. It's also good for your mental health. If you have an Irish or Scottish last name you should definitely do it.

I have hardly begun to live on Staten Island yet; but, like the man who, when forbidden to tread on English ground, carried Scottish ground in his boots, I carry Concord ground in my boots and in my hat,--and am I not made of Concord dust? I cannot realize that it is the roar of the sea I hear now, and not the wind in Walden woods. I find more of Concord, after all, in the prospect of the sea, beyond Sandy Hook, than in the fields and woods.

I was a bookworm. Every week I'd go to the library and get seven books. Remember libraries? I wonder if people still go. And I learned about everything from the library. I came from a Scottish family. Old school.

We Slovenians are even better misers than you Scottish. You know how Scotland began? One of us Slovenians was spending too much money, so we put him on a boat and he landed in Scotland.

Most of the music I've become interested in is hybrid in its originsClassical music, of course, is unbelievably hybrid. Jazz is an obvious amalgam. Bluegrass comes from eighteenth-century Scottish and Irish folk music that made contact with the blues. By exploring music, you're exploring everything.

We don't really go in for big family dinners, but Scottish people are famously confrontational. It's a cultural thing, so maybe we don't need to have them to clear the air. Also, traditional family food isn't as nice here so there's no payoff for traveling hundreds of miles.

Look at Scottish guys wearing kilts - you could look at them and laugh, but the way they carry themselves, how can you? You can wear some of the weirdest things and be cool. If you believe in it, that's what makes it cool.

For instance, the notion of non-penal substitution. This idea, found in the work of the nineteenth century Scottish Reformed theologian John McLeod Campbell and based upon his reading of the letter to the Hebrews in particular, is that Christ offers up his life and death as a penitential act on our behalf, rather than as a punishment in our stead.

My grandfather, Harry Ferguson, was a butcher in Hill of Beath; so even though my grandparents lived in some poverty, we got loads of beef. My grandmother, Meg, was a fine Scottish cook who did slow cooking.

I got into one of the Scottish classical styles called piobaireachd, which is a very old music that started around the 1700s or something. I really got into this music. After that, I started to compose bagpipe music in my notations. Then I started building bagpipes by myself, and then I started to perform with the instrument myself in the 1980s.

If the Scottish want to break away, I shall stand on Hadrian's Wall with a teary handkerchief, and say: 'Good riddance to the lot of you, and take your stupid bagpipes with you.'

Scottish bagpipe has two tenors and one bass - three drone pipes - and then the one chanter. If you put bagpipes together, it creates such a fine sound.

Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind.

The North American intellectual tradition began, I maintain, in the encounter of British Romanticism with assertive, pragmatic North American English - the Protestant plain style in both the U.S. and Canada, with its no-nonsense Scottish immigrants.

Give us our parliament in Scotland. We will start with no traditions. We will start with ideals. We will start with purpose, with courage. We will start with the aim and object that there will be 134 men and women, pledged to 134 Scottish constituencies, to spend their whole brain power, their whole courage and their whole soul in making Scotland into a country in which we can take people from all the nations of the earth and say: this is our land, this is our Scotland, these are our people, these are our men, our works, our women and children: can you beat it?

Many miles away there's a shadow on the door of a cottage on the Shore of a dark Scottish lake.

I lost the accent years ago, but I'm still very proud to be Scottish, and I love wearing a kilt.

I've never played Scots or got the chance to do my Scottish accent. I'm always trying it out in auditions, but they always say no. I'd love to act in a Scottish accent for once.

On 18th September 2014, between the hours of 7am and 10pm, absolute sovereign power will lie in the hands of the Scottish people. They have to decide whether to keep it, or give it away to where their minority status makes them permanently powerless and vulnerable.

Many people have heard the remarkable example of devotion involving a Skye terrier dog who worked for a Scottish shepherd named Old Jock. In 1858, the day after Jock was buried (with almost nobody present to mourn him except his shaggy dog) in the churchyard at Greyfriars Abbey in Edinburgh, Bobby was found sleeping on his master's grave, where he continued to sleep every night for fourteen years.