Britain Quotes - Page 33

A fundamental reason why Britain was not torn apart by civil war after 1688 was that its inhabitants' aggression was channelled so regularly and so remorsely into war and imperial expansion abroad.

Linda Colley

War, Expansion, Torn Apart

Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.53, Yale University Press

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Jacobitism involved much more than a debate about the merits of a particular dynasty. Men and women were well aware that its success was almost certain to involved them in civil war. And the more politically educated knew that the Stuart Pretender was a pawn in a worldwide struggle for commercial and imperial primacy between Britain and France.

Linda Colley

War, Struggle, Men

Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.79, Yale University Press

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A British imperium enabled Scots to feel themselves peers of the Ebglish in a way still denied them in an island kingdom. The language bears that out very clearly. The English and the foreign are still all too inclined to refer to the island of Great Britain as 'England'. But at no time have they ever customarily referred to an English empire.

Linda Colley

Islands, Peers, Kingdoms

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Virtually every war fought since the Act of Union had gone badly at some stage, but before 1783 none had ended in defeat. Nor would any major war in which Britain was involved after this date end in defeat. Those who are curious about this country's peculiar social and political stability probably need look no further than this for essential cause.

Linda Colley

Country, War, Political

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In virtually every Continental state at this time, aristocracies had to live with the risk that their property might be pillaged or confiscated. Only in Great Britain did it prove possible to float the idea that aristocratic property was in some magical and strictly intangible way the people's property also. The fact that hundreds of thousands of men and women today are willing to accept that privately owned country houses and their contents are part of Britain's national heritage is one more proof of how successfully the British elite reconstructed its cultural image in an age of revolution.

Linda Colley

Country, Men, Ideas

Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.177, Yale University Press

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In Great Britain, woman was subordinate and confined. But at least she was also safe.

Linda Colley

Safe, British History, Subordinates

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An unprecedented number of uniformed males, marching, parading and engaging in mock battles in every region of Great Britain brought a pleasant frisson of excitement into many normally quiet and deeply repetitive female lives.

Linda Colley

Numbers, Battle, Males

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Most Britons still lived and died without encountering anyone whose skin colour was different from their own. Slaves, in short, did not threaten, at least as far as the British at home were concerned. Bestowing freedom upon them seemed therefore purely an act of humanity and will, an achievement that would be to Great Britain's economic detriment, perhaps, but would have few other domestic consequences.

Linda Colley

Home, Achievement, Humanity

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It would be wrong to interpret the growth of British national consciousness in this period in terms of a new cultural and political uniformity being resolutely imposed on the peripheries of the island by its centre. For many poorer and less literate Britons, Scotland, Wales and England remained more potent rallying calls than Great Britain, except in times of danger from abroad. And even among the politically educated, it was common to think in terms of dual nationalities, not a single national identity.

Linda Colley

Thinking, Islands, Scotland

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For those who reject it, the Victorian experience is something to feel embarrassed about, to apologise for, to escape from, and never to repeat. But to those who remain enthralled, it is a fabulous story of oustanding success and splendid achievement, by comparison with which Britain's 20th century records seems at best unimpressive, and often distinctly lacklustre.

David Cannadine

Achievement, Stories, Records

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We forget today that Britain still depends for its livelihood and, indeed, its day-to-day survival, on the sea. But the Royal Navy is now pitifully small and has been reduced in size by the current Government, seeking economies to finance its social programmes. Fine while there is no threat to our security. But what use would schools and hospitals be if we could not protect our imports?

John Keegan

School, Government, Sea

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It is clear that the flame of True Freedom had passed with naval supremacy and constitutional, consultative government from the United Provinces to Great Britain, where it was regarded with quite as much national pride.

Peter Padfield

Pride, Government, Flames

Peter Padfield (2000). “Maritime Supremacy & the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World”, Overlook Books

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'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's isle, and makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile... 'Tis Britain's care to watch o'er Europe's fate, and hold in balance each contending state, To threaten bold presumptuous kings with war, and answer her afflicted neighbours' prayer... Soon as her fleets appear their terrors cease.

Joseph Addison

Kings, Prayer, War

Joseph Addison, “A Letter From Italy”

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'A Naval History of Britain' which begins in the 7th century has to explain what it means by Britain. My meaning is simply the British Isles as a whole, but not any particular nation or state or our own day... 'Britain' is not a perfect word for this purpose, but 'Britain and Ireland' would be both cumbersome and misleading, implying an equality of treatment which is not possible. Ireland and the Irish figure often in this book, but Irish naval history, in the sense of the history of Irish fleets, is largely a history of what might have been rather than what actually happened.

Nicholas Rodger

Book, Mean, Perfect

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Crown Prince Rupprecht, the heir to the throne of Bavaria who commanded the army group facing the British at the Somme, was the senior direct lineal heir of James Stuart, the Old Pretender of 1715. Had there been any Jacobites left in Britain in 1916, they would have had to regard this south German prince as their rightful king.

David Frum

Senior, Kings, Army

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Kitty Kelley's method, already perfected in her unauthorised and unflattering biographies of Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan, is to write bestsellers that take what she describes as an 'unblinking look' at their subjects - which might, of course, mean that her eyes are permanently open or permanently closed... the result is a work so bad that Britons cannot realise how fortunate they are in being unable to buy it. The great mistake with this book is not that it has been published in Britain, but that it has actually been published anywhere else.

David Cannadine

Mistake, Book, Mean

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High national emotions are permissible when a soccer team is playing precisely because they are impermissible at most other times. There aren't, simply, many other places where you can sing your national anthem until you lose your voice without causing a riot. In the context of soccer, flag-waving nationalism - even chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, flag-waving nationalism - is acceptable in Britain.

Anne Applebaum

Soccer, Football, Team

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I think if you've managed Celtic or Rangers you can go on to be Prime Minister of Great Britain, it's that hard.

Gordon Strachan

Soccer, Football, Thinking

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I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work. And with the disappearance of its rentier aspect much else in it besides will suffer a sea-change. It will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events which I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor, will be nothing sudden, merely a gradual but prolonged continuance of what we have seen recently in Great Britain, and will need no revolution.

John Maynard Keynes

Wisdom, Order, Sea

John Maynard Keynes (2006). “General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money”, p.345, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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All three of our major religions in Britain ~ Christianity, Islam and Judaism - have a hateful idea at the very core. That idea is Exclusion: the "othering," if you like, of the unredeemed.

Matthew Parris

Ideas, Atheism, Islam

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There are very few chefs both in Britain and the States that really identify the secret of being consistent. And combine consistency with flavor.

Gordon Ramsay

Consistency, Secret, Flavor

Source: articles.chicagotribune.com

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What I like about Britain is that I can live a normal life here.

Kevin Spacey

Normal, Normal Life, I Can

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(I)t is highly questionable whether when 'Europe speaks with one voice', as we are so often told it is doing, anyone is really listening. Europe's reputation as a serious player in international affairs is unenviable. It is a feeble giant who desperate attempts to be taken seriously are largely risible. It has a weak currency and a sluggish inflexible economy, still much reliant on hidden protectionism. It has a shrinking, ageing, population and, with the exception of Britain, rather unimpressive armed forces and, not excepting Britain, muddled diplomacy.

Margaret Thatcher

Taken, Player, Europe

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The Omen is one of my favorites. Even though I'm an atheist now, I was brought up Catholic and can remember thinking that it could actually be real! The first Dawn of the Dead is a great one. We had a TV serial in Britain called Day of the Triffids and that was always really terrifying for me as well.

Nick Frost

Atheist, Real, Thinking

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It don't spit or swear or sleep around. I've always maintained I'm the most radical rock'n'roll singer Britain has ever seen.

Cliff Richard

Sleep, Rocks, Rock N Roll

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