Great Britain Quotes

• For a small island [Great Britain], the place is remarkably diverse.

  William Golding

  Islands, Britain, Diverse

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• No two countries are identical, and obviously, there's a difference between a referendum on a very complex relationship between Great Britain and the rest of Europe, and a presidential election in the United States.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Europe, Two

  Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece in Joint Press Conference, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. November 15, 2016.

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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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• 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, British

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

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• Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Country, Law, Liberty

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• I am the monarch of the sea,
  The Ruler of the Queen's Navee,
  Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants
  And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!

  Unknown

  Cousin, Queens, Aunt

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• 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

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• Courtesy is not dead - it has merely taken refuge in Great Britain.

  Georges Duhamel

  Taken, Courtesy, British

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• The extremes of opulence and of want are more remarkable, and more constantly obvious, in [Great Britain] than in any other place that I ever saw.

  John Quincy Adams

  Want, Opulence, Saws

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• What Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north.

  Robert Menzies

  East, Britain

  1939 Quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, 27 Apr. Menzies was one of the first Australian statesmen to recognize the importance to his country of Asia.

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• Great Britain has lost an Empire and not yet found a role. The attempt to playa separate power rolethat is, a role apart from Europe, based on a special relationship with the United States, on being the head of the Commonwealthis about to be played out. Her Majesty's Government is now attempting, wisely in my opinion, to re-enter Europe.

  Dean Acheson

  Government, Europe, Special

  1962 Speech at West Point military academy, 5 Dec. According to the New York Times, 23 Nov1969, Prime Minister Harold Wilson later countered,'Mr Acheson is a distinguished figure who has lost a State Department and not yet found himself a role'.

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• Ireland is a small but insuppressible island half an hour nearer the sunset than Great Britain.

  Tom Kettle

  Sunset, Islands, Half

  Tom Kettle (1918). “The day's burden: studies, literary & political and miscellaneous essays”

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• We used to be so proud that our country offered far more economic opportunities than the feudal system in Great Britain, with its royal family, princesses and dukes. But social mobility in the UK is higher than in the US. Our social rift is as big as it was in the 1920s.

  Robert Reich

  Country, Princess, Opportunity

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Will Great Britain have an unwilling India dragged into war or a willing ally co-operating with her in the prosecution of a defence of true democracy?

  Mahatma Gandhi

  War, Democracy, Allies

  Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Collected Works”

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• I don't think I'm prepared to give away my technique to Great Britain. Are you crazy? All I can say is there was a ninja and a fire truck involved, and a great deal of coersion.

  Ryan Reynolds

  Crazy, Thinking, Fire

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television.

  Richard O'Brien

  America, Australia, Shapes

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• The most striking thing Snowden has revealed is the depth of what the NSA and the Five Eyes countries [Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, and the US] are doing, their hunger for all data, for total bulk dragnet surveillance where they try to collect all communications and do it all sorts of different ways. Their ethos is "collect it all."

  Laura Poitras

  Country, Communication, Eye

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I believe that lack of empathy is behind many problems, and I believe that it's disrupting our society. In Great Britain, there is a steady decline in the willingness to be truly generous, and by that I don't mean monetary generosity, but friendship and sympathy for others.

  J. K. Rowling

  Believe, Mean, Generosity

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The colleges of Edinburgh and Geneva as seminaries of science, are considered as the two eyes of Europe. While Great Britain and America give the preference to the former, all other countries give it to the latter.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Eye, College

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.109

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• [I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Honesty, Government, House

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• The sun of her [Great Britain] glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her philosophy has crossed the Channel, her freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolution, whose issue is not given human foresight to scan.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Philosophy, Issues, Horizon

  Thomas Jefferson (1832). “Notes on the State of Virginia”, p.69

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• A British imperium enabled Scots to feel themselves peers of the Ebglish in a way still denied them in an island kingdom. The language bears that out very clearly. The English and the foreign are still all too inclined to refer to the island of Great Britain as 'England'. But at no time have they ever customarily referred to an English empire.

  Linda Colley

  Islands, Peers, Kingdoms

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• In virtually every Continental state at this time, aristocracies had to live with the risk that their property might be pillaged or confiscated. Only in Great Britain did it prove possible to float the idea that aristocratic property was in some magical and strictly intangible way the people's property also. The fact that hundreds of thousands of men and women today are willing to accept that privately owned country houses and their contents are part of Britain's national heritage is one more proof of how successfully the British elite reconstructed its cultural image in an age of revolution.

  Linda Colley

  Country, Men, Ideas

  Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.177, Yale University Press

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• In Great Britain, woman was subordinate and confined. But at least she was also safe.

  Linda Colley

  Safe, British History, Britain

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• An unprecedented number of uniformed males, marching, parading and engaging in mock battles in every region of Great Britain brought a pleasant frisson of excitement into many normally quiet and deeply repetitive female lives.

  Linda Colley

  Numbers, Battle, Males

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