Popular quotes about Britain! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 2
If Britain becomes a member of the Community, it will be healthier for Britain, advantageous for Europe, and a gain for the whole world. I do not know of many economic or political problems in the world which will be easier to solve if Britain is outside rather than inside the Community.
James CallaghanBritain, Europe's second largest economy, a member of the G-7 and the UN Security Council, wants to leave the EU. That weakens us and it weakens Britain.
Martin SchulzFor all the chatter that Britain has moved beyond class, recent studies have found that it determines the life chances of British people more today than at any point since the Second World War... A child born into a rich family in Britain will almost certainly live and die rich, while a child born into a poor family will almost certainly live and die poor.
Johann HariBritain has squandered its windfall of natural resources from North Sea oil and gas. Instead of prudently investing the 'unearned income' from nature, to build a safe, clean and green energy supply for the nation, we face unnecessary shortages. But there is still a chance to put the proceeds from liquidating our fossil fuel assets to better and more appropriate use. Instead of oil companies profiteering from climate change and oil depletion, a windfall tax could establish an Oil Legacy Fund to pay for Britain's urgent transition to a sustainable, decentralised energy system
Andrew SimmsDavid Lloyd George had been to Germany, and been so dazzled by the Fรผhrer that he compared him to George Washington. Hitler was a 'born leader', declared the befuddled former British Prime Minister. He wished that Britain had 'a man of his supreme quality at the head of affairs in our country today'. This from the hero of the First World War! The man who had led Britain to victory over the Kaiser!
Boris JohnsonStarting with the highest-risk countries, and focusing on the route to Britain that is widely abused, student visas, we will increase the number of interviews to considerably more than 100,000, starting next financial year. From there, we will extend the interviewing programme further across all routes to Britain, wherever the evidence takes us.
Theresa MayThe proposition that Muslims are welcome in Britain if, and only if, they stop behaving like Muslims is a doctrine which is incompatible with the principles that guide a free society.
Roy HattersleyMore Irishmen died fighting for Britain in World War I than died fighting against her in all of Ireland's bids for independence combined.
David FrumA fundamental reason why Britain was not torn apart by civil war after 1688 was that its inhabitants' aggression was channelled so regularly and so remorsely into war and imperial expansion abroad.
Linda ColleyUniversal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience,he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain.
Thomas PaineHe has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating itโs most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce...
Thomas JeffersonCornelius Cardew very famous in Britain, because he was the darling of the avant-garde, and he played in a band called AMM, which was an improvising band in the '60s. Paul McCartney used to come watch them. Later on in life, he became disenchanted with avant-garde music, because he felt it couldn't reach the public. It didn't have a wide enough appeal. So he'd take these tunes of old English folk songs and write Stalinist lyrics over the top of them. I do think that when he changed to folk songs, he actually lost the tiny audience he already had, which is quite interesting.
Alasdair MacLeanEssentially we need a new social consensus for economic reform as New Labour has achieved in Britain.
Peter MandelsonI feel there should have been some recognition of the Spice Girls at this year's 25th anniversary. We flew the flag for Britain around the globe in the 1990s and we achieved a hell of a lot.
Melanie ChisholmEvery British Subject born on the continent of America, or in any other of the British dominions, is by the law of God and nature, by the common law, and by act of parliament, (exclusive of all charters from the crown) entitled to all the natural, essential, inherent and inseparable rights of our fellow subjects in Great- Britain.
James OtisStop thinking that if Britain or America or Russia or the West or whatever becomes superior, then we'll beat them, and then we'll all have a rest and live happily ever after. That doesn't work.
George HarrisonI look upon Virginia as a rib taken from Britain's side... While they both proceed as living under the marriage-compact, this Eve might thrive so long as her Adam flourishes. Whatever serpent shall tempt her to go astray etc [will only cause] her husband to rule more strictly over her.
Alexander SpotswoodNot only do we mock the Eurovision Song Contest itself, but we lampoon other European countries for taking it so seriously, and they all retaliate by voting for each other every year and ignoring our (sometimes) palpably superior songs. Accordingly, Britain has become the Millwall FC of Eurovision: we are hated, we know we are hated, and we pretend we are happy to be hated. It's actually quite a sad state of affairs.
Marcus BerkmannI am not a British isolationist. I don't just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too.
David CameronIt [a new world order] needs only that the governments of Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and Russia should get together in order to set up an effective control of currency, credit, production, and distribution โ that is to say, an effective โdictatorship of prosperity,โ for the whole world. The other sixty odd States would have to join in or accommodate themselves to the over-ruling decisions of these major Powers.
H. G. WellsThere was, of course, a global financial crisis. But our Labour predecessors left Britain exceptionally vulnerable and damaged: more personal debt than any other major economy; a dangerously inflated property bubble; and a bloated banking sector behaving as masters, not the servants of the people.
Vince CableA 66-YEAR-OLD woman has become the oldest new mum in Britain after giving birth to a baby boy. I'm amazed she needed to have a caesarean section though, you'd think at 66 she would have needed some masking tape down there just to stop it falling out.
Frankie BoyleEuropean security may now depend on Germany, France, Britain and one or two others, and it's better to start planning now for the possibility of European-only cyber-defense, counter-terrorism, and conventional defense too.
Anne ApplebaumThe next Tory leader would have to unify his party and ensure that Britain stood tall in the world.
Boris JohnsonWith respect to the northeastern boundary of the United States, no official correspondence between this Government and that of Great Britain has passed since that communicated to Congress toward the close of their last session.
Martin Van BurenAn EU without Britain, without 1 of Europe's strongest powers, a country which in many ways invented the single market, and which brings real heft to Europe's influence on the world stage which plays by the rules and which is a force for liberal economic reform would be a very different kind of European Union.
David CameronCrown Prince Rupprecht, the heir to the throne of Bavaria who commanded the army group facing the British at the Somme, was the senior direct lineal heir of James Stuart, the Old Pretender of 1715. Had there been any Jacobites left in Britain in 1916, they would have had to regard this south German prince as their rightful king.
David FrumAnyhow, we obviously understand that, being a United States' ally and having a special relationship with it, the UK in its relations with Russian has to make an allowance for the opinion of its partner - the U.S. We take this reality as a given fact, but let me underscore once again that we will be ready to do as much as Britain will be ready to do in order to resume our mutual cooperation. This does not depend on us.
Vladimir PutinThere are lots of small businesses in Britain that have a pretty tough time but many of them are also parts of supply chains, the leave side roll out JCB but that's one company, all the experts are saying the economy would take a big hit if we came out of the EU.
Frances O'GradyI don't think that the Scots are happy to drift into Britain becoming the poorest of the poor, sub-American 51st state.
Irvine WelshIs it not obvious that Britain, under the regime of Tony Blair, has ceased to respect the Charter of the United Nations?
Robert MugabeWe have, or have had women presidents or prime ministers in Liberia, Chile, Germany, Great Britain...and yet the US of A still hasn't had a women president. It's just beyond my thinking. Look at Congress.
Billie Jean KingI wrote about the life of a housing officer in Britain, in a pretty rough area of London. Maybe it was because I'm a big-mouth and an exhibitionist, and I'm slightly egotistical. All those things have to come together for a writer.
Ben RichardsIn plain words: now that Britain has told the world that she has the H-Bomb she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare.
J. B. PriestleyThe current anger at the march of turbines and pylons across the hills of Britain is not from nimbys. Government money has lubricated most backyard owners to support wind power. It comes from those who appreciate the beauty of the countryside and who question the industrial spoliation of miles of open landscape for a pitiful net gain to climate change.
Simon JenkinsI think Britain needs to get out there on the world stage and make itself heard. And for much of my political career, there has been a sense of retreat from the world stage because of what happened in the Iraq War.
George OsborneI think it was the occasion of the final psychological break with Great Britain, in a way that had clearly not happened to that date, especially in New England and to som degree in the South.
Charles R. MorrisI can't remember who it was who advocated that you should march with the left and dine with the right but I've often concurred, taking the view that I personify the great tolerance of Britain by consenting to being regally entertained. Besides, there is a degree of truth in the view that while the left are worthier, the right are wittier.
Will SelfIndeed, Britain was set to repeat the old, familiar cycle of boom and bust. Since then, we have created and rigorously adhered to a new framework of modern economic management
Gordon BrownThe art critics on some of Britain's newspapers could as easily have been assigned gardening or travel, and been cheerfully employed for life.
Charles SaatchiBritain didn't win WWII by panicking. Letยดs be bold, determined and stick to the best of values.
Hans RoslingA 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 ColleyListen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, Americaโburned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing? This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion.
Walter M. Miller, Jr.In Britain I focus on my horse riding. I ride everyday no matter what. I have a wonderful trainer called Joe Meyer. He is from New Zealand and competed in the World Games this year. I have been with him for four years and we have a good rapport.
Liz HallidayHeartless though it may seem to some, among the least harmful things to eat are sustainably culled wild animals. In the absence of natural predators, deer populations in parts of Britain have reached such dense numbers that the woodlands they browse fail to regenerate.
Tristram StuartI will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget... we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat... All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness... We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that... Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.
Winston Churchill