British History Quotes

• England will still be England, an everlasting animal, stretching into the future and the past and like all living things having the power to change out of all recognition and yet remain the same.

  George Orwell

  Animal, Past, History

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: A patriot after all, 1940-1941”

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• We can find common qualities and common values that have made Britain the country it is. Our belief in tolerance and liberty which shines through British history. Our commitment to fairness, fair play and civic duty.

  Gordon Brown

  Country, Commitment, Play

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• 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.

  Winston Churchill

  Respect, Unique, People

  Hansard 10 June 1941, col. 152

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• 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.'

  Winston Churchill

  War, Men, Years

  Speech in House of Commons, 18 June 1940

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• When a Man is tried of London, he is tired of life.

  Samuel Johnson

  Travel, Tired, Men

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• The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction.

  George Orwell

  History, Battle, Cavalry

  George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.115, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

  Oliver Cromwell

  God, Done With You, Names

  Remarks to Rump Parliament, 20 Apr. 1653. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations describes this as "oral tradition." BulstrodeWhitlocke, Memorials of the English Affairs (1682), describes Cromwell as telling the House that "they has sate long enough, unles they had done more good."

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• 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.

  Quentin Crisp

  Want, British, Impression

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• Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Gun, British Rule In India

  Mahatma Gandhi, General Press (2014). “My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi”, p.681, GENERAL PRESS

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• Almost everywhere else in Europe, the more military the state, the stronger the king - except in Britain. Here it was parliament, not the monarchy, who signed the cheques. The longer the war went on, the stronger parliament became, as the purse on which it sat grew bigger and bigger.

  Simon Schama

  Kings, Military, War

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• Much of the world today, including the United States, is still living in the social, cultural, and political aftermath of Britain's cultural achievements, its industrial revolution, its government of checks and balances, and its conquests around the world.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, History, Achievement

  Thomas Sowell (2008). “Conquests And Cultures: An International History”, p.67, Basic Books

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• If there is a single trait in our character that has historically set us apart from other nations, it is our determination to limit the authority of those who rule over us.

  Billy Bragg

  Determination, Character, History

  Billy Bragg (2013). “The Progressive Patriot”, p.330, Random House

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• I was born in the '60s and grew up in the '70s - not exactly the best decade for food in British history. It was horrendous. It was a time when, as a nation, we excelled in art and music and acting and photography and fashion - all creative skills... all apart from cooking.

  Heston Blumenthal

  Photography, Fashion, Art

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• At one level Great Britain at the beginning of the 18th century was like the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, both three and one, and altogether something of a mystery.

  Linda Colley

  Christian, Doctrine, Three

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• I called the New World into existence, to redress the balance of the Old.

  George Canning

  History, Balance, World

  Speech in House of Commons, 12 Dec. 1826

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• Scandal, it bears repeating, undermines monarchies, but rarely ends them. It may be true that, according to a recent editorial in the New York Times, the British monarchy now exists primarily 'for our amusement'. But as long as people find it amusing, and want to be amused by it, they will be happy to see it undermined but uneager to kill it off.

  David Cannadine

  New York, Long, People

  David Cannadine (1998). “History in Our Time”, Penguin Group USA

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• Contrary to received wisdom, the British are not an insular people in the conventional sense - far from it. For most of their early modern and modern history, they have had more contact with more parts of the world than almost any other nation - it is just that this contact has regularly taken the form of aggressive military and commercial enterprise.

  Linda Colley

  Military, Taken, People

  Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.8, Yale University Press

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• To collude in the minimisation of British history on the grounds of its imagined irrelevance to our rebranded national future, or from a suspicion that it does no more than recycle patriotic pieties unsuited to a global marketplace, would be an act of appallingly self-inflicted collective memory loss.

  Simon Schama

  Memories, Patriotic, Loss

  Simon Schama (2000). “A History of Britain: At the edge of the world? 3000 BC-AD 1603”, Miramax

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• Those Victorians: endlessly fascinating, broad in their learning, heroic in their achievements, in parts completely mad.

  Simon Heffer

  History, Mad, Achievement

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• There was no more dangerous a time in a nation's life than the passing of a ruler when the succession was in doubt.

  Leanda de Lisle

  History, Doubt, Passing

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• The unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  History, Three, Slavery

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1975). “History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne”, Ayer Company Pub

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• Britain, the first industrial nation, had offered the world a remarkable public experiment in liberal, capitalist democracy whose success was premised upon free trade and world peace. Tuesday, 4 August 1914 brought that experiment to an abrupt halt.

  Kenneth O. Morgan

  August, Tuesday, History

  Kenneth O. Morgan (1984). “The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain”, p.522, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Out of the chaos of post-Roman Dark Age Britain, the English had created the world's first nation-state: One king, one country, one church, one currency, one language and a single unified representative national administration. Never again in England would sovereignty descend to the merely regional level. Never again would the idea of England and the unity of England ever be challenged.

  David Starkey

  Country, Kings, Dark

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• Prince Charles's concern for the underprivileged and disadvantaged has not exactly endeared him to the Conservative Central Office. As Norman Tebbit replied, it is not surprising that the Prince is so sympathetic towards the unemployed: he is by way of being one of them himself.

  David Cannadine

  Office, Way, Conservative

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• In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have promised, not just instruction but pleasure.

  Simon Schama

  Illumination, History, Narrators

  Simon Schama (2000). “A History of Britain: At the edge of the world? 3000 BC-AD 1603”, Miramax

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