British Quotes - Page 35

• The British press isn't as vicious as it used to be, and these days it's sort of cool to care again. Everyone loves an everyman anthem.

  Guy Garvey

  Care, Anthem, One Love

  Source: www.spin.com

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• Americans are very good at animating voices. I don't know why. They have a freedom with them that we British actors find more difficult to get to.

  Helen Mirren

  Voice, Actors, Difficult

  Source: collider.com

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• The Americans are identical to the British in all respects except, of course, language.

  Oscar Wilde

  Language, Identical, Courses

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• ...the reality of intelligent British speech... uses blasphemus, coital and cloacal expletives as a matter of course.

  Stephen Fry

  Intelligent, Reality, Use

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• The British happened to the rest of the world. Now the world happens to Britain.

  Andrew Marr

  World, Britain, Happened

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• Pitt the Younger was a great British Prime Minister. He saved Europe from Napoleon, he was the pilot who weathered the storm. I don't know whether he'd have done it any better or quicker had he been married.

  Edward Heath

  Europe, Storm, Done

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• A genial and cultured Arab, Ameen Rihani, whose English is perfect and whose eloquence is astounding. He will discuss with equal eagerness and knowledge the merits of Picasso or Van Gogh, or the Zionist question, or the British achievements in Arabia.

  Kenneth Williams

  Perfect, Achievement, Merit

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• The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

  Niall Ferguson

  Should, Appetite, Understood

  "Niall Ferguson: 'Westerners don't understand how vulnerable freedom is" by William Skidelsky, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2011.

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• President Obama hosted a state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron. The president and the British are getting along a lot better lately. They love to compare notes on ways the Tea Party's always trying to overthrow their rule in America.

  Argus Hamilton

  Party, Always Trying, America

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• I'm English and I am British. I don't know if I feel part of a music scene. Musically, I have as many feelings and affinity with Americans or Canadians, or all sorts of people as I do with English people.

  David Gilmour

  People, Feelings, Scene

  Billboard Interview, www.billboard.com. February 21, 2006.

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• You can say "ass," but you can't say "asshole." That's why I always cringe when a character in a TV show refers to someone as an "ass." Unless you're British, calling someone an ass really doesn't work. But those are the rules of television. You can be a dirtbag, but not a scumbag.

  Gilbert Gottfried

  Character, Tv Shows, Calling

  Interview with Amelie Gillette, www.avclub.com. August 9, 2005.

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• In the past, people couldn't place me. They thought that I was Danish or English or French. They never got that I am Italian. I'm not typical, maybe because my visual education was very mixed. There was a lot of London in my aesthetic: The Face, i-D, British music, and a lot of British fashion . . . But I really enjoy this contrast.

  Italo Zucchelli

  Fashion, Italian, Past

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Americans and British respondents don't want to let the German people off the hook. They make the case that if you get rid of Hitler, some other leader apart from Hitler would have emerged and, because of the structural constant of German nationalism, would have exploited German national feeling and produce the same kind of events no matter what.

  Gavriel David Rosenfeld

  People, Leader, Feelings

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Kenya is rapidly developing its industry and manufacturing, and its cultural identity as a new country. We had a humongous history pre-British, and when we were colonized and violently reshuffled, we had to decide who we were again. We couldn't rest on the stories and the cultures of our great-grandparents.

  Wangechi Mutu

  Country, Grandparent, Identity

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• A British lawyer would like to think of himself as part of that mysterious entity called The Law; an American lawyer would like a swimming pool and two houses.

  Simon Hoggart

  Swimming, Thinking, Law

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• It was part of your religion to hate the British.

  Rebecca Harding Davis

  Hate

  Rebecca Harding Davis (1904). “Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing Cultural Autobiography”, p.25, Vanderbilt University Press

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• The news that Osama Bin Laden is dead will bring great relief to people across the world. Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the worst terrorist atrocities the world has seen - for 9/11 and for so many attacks, which have cost thousands of lives, many of them British.

  David Cameron

  People, Atrocities, Relief

  "Osama bin Laden death welcomed by David Cameron". www.theguardian.com. May 2, 2011.

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• The spring of 1942 was given over to a very impassioned, strategic debate about where we should first attack in counterpunching against the Germans and Italians. The British argued very persuasively on the part of Winston Churchill, prime minister, that this was a very green American Army, green soldiers, green commanders.

  Rick Atkinson

  Spring, Army, Soldier

  "Military Historian Writes Of Wars Past And Present". Interview with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. July 1, 2010.

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• Through its imperialist system Britain brought about untold suffering of millions of people. And this is an historical fact. To be able to admit this would increase the respect, you know, which we have for British institutions.

  Nelson Mandela

  People, Historical, Suffering

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• Since the introduction of inanimate mechanism into British manufactories, man, with few exceptions, has been treated as a secondary and inferior machine; and far more attention has been given to perfect the raw materials of wood and metals than those of body and mind.

  Robert Owen

  Men, Perfect, Mind

  Robert Owen (1837). “Essays on the Formation of the Human Character”, p.29

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• I had a lot of anger against the way things 'should be done' - conforming to social norms, ticking boxes to gain acceptance. Frustration at the pointlessness and predictability of smalltalk. Oh and a lot of anger about tea, which the British seem to use to avoid actually saying anything.

  Rupert Friend

  Acceptance, Frustration, Tea

  "Rupert Friend Talks Directing Short Film Debut 'Steve,' Starring Knightley and Firth". Interview with Maggie Lange, www.indiewire.com. September 26, 2012.

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• I was not seduced by the celebrity side of acting. However, as a British girl watching a lot of American TV, I saw that there was a whole world of opportunity in the States that I wanted to discover.

  Carmen Ejogo

  Girl, Opportunity, Acting

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• A lot of British actors will look at America as a land of opportunity. In England, there's such a small pool of working actors of color. There's such a small amount of work that is actually produced in the first place.

  Aml Ameen

  Opportunity, Color, Land

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Ending the slave trade was contrary to British economic interests. For all its limitations and hypocrisies - British slavery itself, of course, still continued to exist - I still think it was a great moment in human history.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Thinking, Hypocrisy, Slavery

  "35 Million Ways to Be Black". Interview with Adam Hochschild, www.motherjones.com. March 14, 2007.

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• If Bush had read all the documents about the Russians and British in Afghanistan in the 19th century, he would have not done what he did in the 21st. He would have understood how difficult it was to control this territory. He probably didn't read them.

  Umberto Eco

  Done, Territory, Century

  Interview with Chris Wallace, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 2, 2015.

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