British Quotes - Page 30

• There is so much oil now in the Gulf of Mexico, and you can thank the folks of British Petroleum for this, so much oil in the Gulf, you can now park on it.

  David Letterman

  Oil, Mexico, Parks

  7 Copy quote

• All men - whether they go by the name of Americans or Russians or Chinese or British or Malayans or Indians or Africans - have obligations to one another that transcend their obligations to their sovereign societies.

  Norman Cousins

  Men, Names, Chinese

  Norman Cousins (1962). “In Place of Folly”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Great Britain the price of food is at a higher level than in any other country, and consequently, the British artisan labours at a disadvantage in proportion to the higher rate of his food.

  Joseph Hume

  Country, Levels, Proportion

  4 Copy quote

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

  Bill Maher

  Sexy, Silver, Accents

  4 Copy quote

• It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fall, Believe, Power

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.215, Cosimo, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A certain secret jealousy of the British Minister is always lurking in the breast of every American Senator, if he is truly democratic; for democracy, rightly understood, is the government of the people, by the people, for the benefit of Senators, and there is always a danger that the British Minister may not understand this political principle as he should.

  Henry Adams

  Government, People, Political

  Henry Adams (2015). “Democracy”, p.18, Sheba Blake Publishing

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  R. W. Apple

  Country, Dog, Horse

  5 Copy quote

• Overall his period in office can only be characterised as a decade of missed opportunities in which the hopes of the British people for a new kind of politics were shattered [on Tony Blair]

  Menzies Campbell

  Opportunity, People, Office

  4 Copy quote

• Socialism has been preached for so long, the British people no longer have any sense of personal responsibility.

  Roy Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet

  Responsibility, Long, People

  4 Copy quote

• The military struggle may frankly be regarded for what it actually was, namely a war for independence, an armed attempt to imposethe views of the revolutionists upon the British government and large sections of the colonial population at whatever cost to freedom of opinion or the sanctity of life and property.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Military, War, Struggle

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Running, Country, Hunting

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Grace, Doubt, Britain

  'Letters to his Son' (1774) 18 November 1748

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was the British spy who had come out of the woodwork and told it how it really was, and anything I said to the contrary only enforced the myth. And since I was writing for a public hooked on Bond and desperate for the antidote, the myth stuck.

  John le Carre

  Writing, Spy, Desperate

  "John le Carré: 'I was a secret even to myself'". www.theguardian.com. April 12, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me - a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn't dignified doesn't worry me.

  E. M. Forster

  Class, Worry, Support

  "Liberty In England", Speech (June 21, 1935), reprinted in "Abinger Harvest", 1936.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The British have their own conception of what constitutes the typical American. He must have a flavor of the Wild West about him. He must do spectacular things. He must not be punctilious about dignity, decorum and other refinements characteristic of the real British gentleman. The Yankee pictured by the Briton must be a bustler. If he is occasionally flagrantly indiscreet in speech and action, then he is so much more surely stamped the genuine article. The most typical American the British ever set their eyes on was, in their judgment, Theodore Roosevelt.

  B. C. Forbes

  Real, Eye, America

  4 Copy quote

• Gorgonised me from head to foot With a stony British stare.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Feet, Staring

  'Maud' (1855) pt. 1, sect. 13, st. 2

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing highlights better the continuing gap between rhetoric and substance in British financial services than the failure of providers here to emulate Jack Bogle's index fund success in the United States. Every professional in the City knows that index funds should be core building blocks in any long-term investor's portfolio. Since 1976, the Vanguard index funds has produced a compound annual return of 12 percent, better than three-quarters of its peer group.

  Jonathan Davis

  Block, Cities, Long

  4 Copy quote

• [D]rawing up 'secret war plans' for a possible attack on Iraq wasn't irrational. The low-level war against Saddam was 12 years old, with no end in sight. American and British pilots were getting shot at, sanctions weren't working, and Bush was getting warnings that Saddam had all those terrible weapons and would use them against America. Bush would have been a fool not to draw up plans. Gee, wait till the critics find out that FDR, without ever informing the media, was plotting to fight Japan and Germany before Pearl Harbor.

  John Leo

  War, Fighting, Japan

  5 Copy quote

• Like the British constitution, cricket was not made: it has 'grown'.

  Neville Cardus

  Constitution, Cricket, Made

  1945 English Cricket.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Lord Randolph Churchill

  Recovery, Loss, India

  6 Copy quote

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

  Lord Randolph Churchill

  Senior, Army, Troops

  5 Copy quote

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

  Lord Randolph Churchill

  Loyalty, Organization, Special

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  M. S. Golwalkar

  Country, Children, Order

  9 Copy quote

• I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. It therefore seems to me that there is one and only one valid argument on which a case for giving up strategic bombing could be based, namely that it has already completed its task and that nothing now remains for the Armies to do except to occupy Germany against unorganized resistance.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  Giving Up, Army, Cities

  Letter to Sir Norman Bottomley on March 29, 1945. "Bomber Harris: The Story of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris". Book by Dudley Saward, p. 294, 1985.

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  T.S. Mathews

  Silly, Men, People

  10 Copy quote