Cockneys Quotes

• It's a damn shame we have this immediate ticking off in the mind about how people sound. On the other hand, how many people really want to be operated upon by a surgeon who talks broad cockney?

  Eileen Atkins

  Hands, People, Mind

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• I don't want to say I'll never play someone with a cockney accent, but I think I would be irritated by me doing it.

  Daniel Radcliffe

  Thinking, Play, Would Be

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• It was great to play an ex-marine cockney thug. All my roles are as different as the colours of the rainbow.

  Luke Treadaway

  Marine, Thug, Play

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• I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

  Michael Caine

  Dollars, Nightmare, Bourgeois

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• I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Pain, Two

  Fors Clavigera Letter 79, 18 June 1877. This comment was the basis for Whistler's 1878 libel suit against Ruskin.

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• I love my accent, I thought it was useful in Gone In 60 Seconds because the standard villain is upper class or Cockney. My Northern accent would be an odd clash opposite Nic Cage.

  Christopher Eccleston

  Opposites, Class, Would Be

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• The Crafty Cockney had a picture of the owner dressed up as a copper, so I brought it home, wore it on TV and the name just stuck.

  Eric Bristow

  Home, Names, Tvs

  "Small Talk: Eric Bristow". Interview with Nick Harper, www.theguardian.com. August 1, 2003.

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• Lots of middle class people are running around pretending to be Cockney.

  Christopher Eccleston

  Running, Class, People

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• We had probably our best ever Player of the Year Dance last week. You elected Dennis Wise as Player of the Year. Dennis accepted his award mimicking Vialli, whereupon Zola shouted 'Speak English', Dennis switched to his normal Cockney voice only for Zola to shout 'You're still not speaking English'.

  Ken Bates

  Soccer, Wise, Football

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• I actually had a cockney accent before I went to drama school. It's softened up a bit.

  Gemma Arterton

  Drama, School, Accents

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• I don't like John Terry and I never have. He's got funny eyes and he's a cry baby. He's also a Cockney.

  Noel Gallagher

  Baby, Eye, Cry

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• The sexy magazine in Britain in that time was called Club International. Club International: It was about as international as the International House of Pancakes. It should have been called Naked Cockney Girls with Scurvy.

  Craig Ferguson

  Girl, Sexy, Should Have

  "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson". www.imdb.com. 2005-2015.

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• I can write a story in working-class Stockholm Swedish, but I'm not going to assume I can perform the same feat with Cockney. I'll focus on adventures in story, themes and structure instead.

  Karin Tidbeck

  Writing, Adventure, Class

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.

  Michael Caine

  America, Actors, England

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

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• One of the main things about Cockney is, you speak at twice the speed as Americans. Americans speak very slow.

  Michael Caine

  Speak, Speed

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• Millions who could not follow closely or accurately the main events of the War looked day after day in the papers for the fortunes of Mafeking, and when finally the news of its relief was flashed throughout the world, the streets of London became impassable, and the floods of sterling, cockney patriotism were released in such a deluge of unbridled, delirious joy as was never witnessed again till Armistace Night, 1918.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Night, Joy

  Winston Churchill (1959). “Great Contemporaries”

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• I could be a dray man delivering the beer, maybe. If they could wangle some cockney in, that would be great.

  Pauline Quirke

  Beer, Men, Would Be

  Source: www.mirror.co.uk

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• I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my cockney accent.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Class, Effort, Ordinary

  "Tales of the city". Interview with Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. August 11, 2003.

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• I've been acting a long time, and I can play a Cockney gangster or a womanizer in my sleep or standing on my head. But what I try to do is I try to find characters that are as far away from me as I possibly can and then make them real. A French Nazi is about as far away from me as I can possibly get without actually going to Mars or something.

  Michael Caine

  Real, Character, Sleep

  "Profile and Interview: Michael Caine". Interview with Erika Hernandez, www.aboutfilm.com. January, 2004.

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• The sea is masculine, the type of active strength. Look, what egg-shells are drifting all over it, each one, like ours, filled with men in ecstasies of terror, alternating with cockney conceit, as the sea is rough or smooth. Is this sad-colored circle an eternal cemetery?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Sea, Circles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.172

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• Apollo has peeped through the shutter,
  And awaken'd the witty and fair;
  The boarding-school belle's in a flutter,
  The twopenny post's in despair;
  The breath of the morning is flinging
  A magic on blossom and spray,
  And cockneys and sparrows are singing
  In chorus on Valentine's day.

  Winthrop Mackworth Praed

  Witty, Morning, Valentine

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• My parents were hippies, and the story is that they went through a dictionary looking for a beautiful word to name me. They nearly called me Banyan, but flipped a few pages on and reached "China," thankfully. The other reason they liked it is that "china" is Cockney rhyming slang for "mate." People say "my old china," meaning "my old mate," because "china plate" rhymes with "mate.

  China Mieville

  Beautiful, Hippie, Names

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• I have always been English, ever since I emigrated from England and since the kids in Canada beat me up at the age of twelve for having an East London Cockney accent. I thank them for the cockney taunts because the beatings turned me on to boxing. But on a serious note Canada has been kind to me.

  Lennox Lewis

  Kids, East London, Boxing

  "Lennox Lewis Answers Your Questions". "Talking Point: Forum", news.bbc.co.uk. December 21, 1999.

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• You can begin to see an amalgamation of cultures, the real beginning of one world. Ten years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine a Cockney singing group with a Southern Negro style and Indian and electronic music. I wonder if people have even noticed what a tremendous cultural signal the Beatles are.

  Alan Arkin

  Real, Years, People

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• We must grow out of religion. It is either bugaboo, formalism, or hysteria. Besides, what proof is there that "the churches" know more about "God" than the Cockney sentry on duty outside the camp? We have only their say-so.

  Richard Aldington

  Hysteria, Church, Proof

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