British Quotes - Page 33

• I feel Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence was for the intelligent, educated British.It was not for those who don't understand this language.

  Raj Thackeray

  Intelligent, Violence, Language

  Source: www.scribd.com

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• 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."

  Jim Gaffigan

  Funny, Thinking, Two

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• I am terribly British. Especially in the eyes of Americans. I drink several gallons of tea a day, I'm often excessively polite and it's only through many years of expensive and painful dental work that I don't have bad teeth.

  Rhianna Pratchett

  Eye, Years, Dental Work

  Source: www.thatvideogameblog.com

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• At the other end of the scale I was there with a whole lot of young British athletes so I was getting to see them take their first steps on the international ladder. I'd like to think maybe in five years time I'll look back and I'll forget all about the lost luggage and I'll forget about the horrible hotel, but I'll remember these wonderful athletes stepping onto the track for the first time.

  Jill Douglas

  Athlete, Thinking, Years

  Source: www.bbc.co.uk

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• I worked closely with Steve Peters, the British Cycling team's psychologist, and we came up with a strategy of dealing with the pressure. It basically involved displacing the negative thoughts with visualisation. Not a complicated technique, but very effective if done properly. I just kept running through the race in my head over and over so that I wouldn't let the distractions around me put me off.

  Chris Hoy

  Running, Team, Cycling

  Source: www.bbc.co.uk

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• The British Fashion Awards are also very important because it's my hometown. But it's really a recognition of my team, and those awards give me an opportunity to thank them in a formal way. You and I have worked together enough to know that it really isn't about two people. It's a whole team. And so it's great to acknowledge that you never do anything alone.

  Christopher Bailey

  Fashion, Team, Opportunity

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I've heard the sound of 70 condoms being scraped over the floor at the British Museum. It feels like being an adventurer. Why would you stay in your living room if you could go out and experience things no one's ever experienced?

  Herbert

  Museums, Sound, Rooms

  Interview with Nitsuh Abebe, pitchfork.com. November 10, 2008.

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• I grew up looking at... going to the movies a lot, as much as they'd let you. I grew up in Manchester in the north of England in the '40s and '50s. I saw a lot of movies. They were all Hollywood and British movies. I didn't see a film that wasn't in English until I was 17 when I went to London to be a student.

  Mike Leigh

  Hollywood, London, Saws

  "Big Think Interview With Mike Leigh". Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 7, 2010.

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• I've always criticised American policy when I've disagreed with it. Just as I've criticised British policy. I was violently anti-Suez and pro-American in 1956, just as I was violently anti-Soviet on the invasion of Hungary which took place at the same time.

  Denis Healey

  Invasion, Hungary, Policy

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• The British government is a murder machine.

  Peter King

  Government, Machines, Murder

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• I am closer to the pacifist side, in that I think that the British response to German aggression, which was to try to starve the Continent into a state of revolt and to terrorize German civilians with bombing raids, was part of the total catastrophe.

  Nicholson Baker

  Thinking, Trying, Sides

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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• What's somewhat puzzling is that Churchill himself knew what the reaction would be to any sort of aerial attack on cities, because in 1938 he said that in a future war British cities would be attacked by bombing, and that the response would be that all men would want to join the fight because they would be so incensed by this cowardly manner of attack. Which is a very natural response: when something drops on you from the air and blows up a bunch of buildings and kills people in their sleep, the reaction is going to be rage, confusion, and a search for something to destroy in retaliation.

  Nicholson Baker

  War, Sleep, Fighting

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

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• Churchill was a brilliant and inspiring rhetorician, but one of the first things he did as the head of the British nation was to put German Jews in jail. Tens of thousands of Jews - who had just been fortunate enough to get out from under Hitler only a few years before - spent the entire war in jail.

  Nicholson Baker

  War, Years, Jail

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

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• Gandhi was important for another reason as well: his country was suffering under the British Empire, and yet he was leading a very singular kind of resistance to it. At the time he was speaking about the violence in Europe, his followers were in jail as prisoners of the British government.

  Nicholson Baker

  Country, Government, Europe

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke" by James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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• Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines and sentiments of religious liberty... Let us hear the dignity of his [man's] nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God... Let it be known, that British liberties are not the grants of princes or parliaments.

  John Adams

  Religious, Men, Liberty

  "The Works of John Adams, Volume 3: Autobiography, Diary, Notes of a Debate in the Senate, Essays". Book edited by Charles Francis Adams, 1851.

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• Were I to define the British constitution, therefore, I should say, it is a limited monarchy, or a mixture of the three forms of government commonly known in the schools, reserving as much of the monarchical splendor, the aristocratical independency, and the democratical freedom, as are necessary that each of these powers may have a control, both in legislation and execution, over the other two, for the preservation of the subject's liberty.

  John Adams

  School, Government, Two

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.480

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• There is no good government but what is republican. That the only valuable part of the British constitution is so; for the true idea of a republic is "an empire of laws, and not of men." That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the law, is the best of republics.

  John Adams

  Men, Law, Ideas

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• I loved history, particularly of the British, American and Old Testament kind.

  Luke Ford

  Kind, Old Testament, Testament

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• The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and this without any qualification as to their condition or degree, as is the case in the British government.

  St. George Tucker

  Government, People, Degrees

  William Blackstone, St. George Tucker (1996). “Blackstone's Commentaries: With Notes of Reference to the Constitution and Laws, of the Federal Government of the United States, and of the Commonwealth of Virginia: With an Appendix to Each Volume, Containing Short Tracts Upon Such Subjects as Appeared Necessary to Form a Connecte”, p.490, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• I am confident that the British people will not be intimidated by terrorism.

  Tom Allen

  People, Terrorism, Intimidated

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• Chicken Tikka Massala is now a true British national dish, not only because it is the most popular, but because it is a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences.

  Robin Cook

  Chickens, Dishes

  "Robin Cook's chicken tikka masala speech". www.theguardian.com. April 19, 2001.

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• The head of a ship however has not always an immediate relation to her name, at least in the British navy.

  William Falconer

  British Navy, Names, Ships

  William Falconer (2012). “Falconers Marine Dictionary (1780)”, p.146, BoD – Books on Demand

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• ...The British press... [claimed that Tony] Blair was simply Bush's poodle - a favorite phrase, bewilderingly popular, although it made no sense - and that he was ignoring the will of the British people. Considering the hacks had spent Blair's first six years in office condemning him for relying on focus groups and opinion polls for his policies - in other words, paying attention to nothing but the will of the people, or at least their whims - that seemed a little rich to me, but as I said, logical consistency has never figured highly in the British media's scale of values.

  Larry King

  Media, Years, People

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• Those of us forced to read the London papers sometimes speculate about which is greater: the average British hack's sloth, mendacity, ignorance, obsequiousness, capacity for drink, or aversion to paying for that drink. Smart money tends to split between the latter two.

  Larry King

  Smart, Ignorance, Average

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• ...He went to Scotland and studied under Lister...("Lister was persecuted by the British Medical Association. He was threatened with having his license revoked.") Yet in Lister's hospital virtually no one died as a result of operations because Lister had developed a carbolic acid wash and disinfectant. Dr. Keen came back from Scotland...He was referred to as a crazy Listerite.....He was denied an opportunity to practice in every hospital in Philadelphia.

  Paul Douglas

  Crazy, Dark, Opportunity

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