Popular quotes about Britain! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Little Britainโฆ ever since it first came onโฆ I come here a lot, we have a lot of friends here, my wife used to work with a lot of Brits, so we were always keyed into the hot shows when they first came out. So, I fell in love with Little Britain.
Paul FeigAt the moment we are hard-wired into the European markets - 50% of our exports go to Europe - and that has not been good for the UK. So I'm not saying "make Britain entirely dependent on China". I'm saying "let's diversify a bit". When I became chancellor, China was our ninth largest trading partner. This is the world's second biggest economy. China was doing more business with Belgium than it was with Britain.
George OsborneBritain is obviously one of the world powers and they bombed the World Trade Centre, which is a landmark in itself, and over in Britain you've got Buckingham Palace and the Eiffel Tower, which are big buildings, so to speak.
Robbie KearnsNow that Britain has voted to leave, I think the country deserves to have a leader who believes in Britain outside the European Union and who also has experience at the highest level of government.
Michael GoveI think until Britain acknowledges just how much of a presence black people had here before the Sixties, then there are certain stories that are not going to be inclusive of what I have to offer.
David OyelowoHe 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 JeffersonBP found itself in a difficult situation after the tragic events in the Gulf of Mexico. We did everything we could to support it. Britain is interested in this, isn't it? I think it is. The same is true of other areas.
Vladimir PutinIt don't spit or swear or sleep around. I've always maintained I'm the most radical rock'n'roll singer Britain has ever seen.
Cliff RichardEvery 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 OtisI would point out that Japan's proposal at the Versailles Peace Conference on the principle of racial equality was rejected by delegates such as those from Britain and the United States
Hideki TojoThe British Labour Party has always had a very strong "Atlanticist component," with an obsequiousness to American policies, and Blair represents this wing. He's clearly obsessed with Iraq. He has to be because the overwhelming majority of the people of Britain oppose a military action. I've never known a situation like it.
John PilgerI grew up in Britain before it became a multicultural place, so in many ways I have a nostalgia for an England that's vanished - the England of my childhood has actually disappeared.
Kazuo IshiguroBritain and the United States are, and will remain, strong and close partners on trade, security and defence.
Theresa MayI will content myself, Mr. Speaker, with those principal motives to union; first, that we are in the rapids and must go on; next that our neighbours will not, on their side, let us rest supinely, even if we could do so from other causes; and thirdly, that by making the united colonies more valuable as an ally to Great Britain, we shall strengthen rather than weaken the imperial connection. (Cheers.
Thomas D'Arcy McGeeIf democracy is destroyed in Britain, it will be not the communists, Trotskyists or subversives but this House which threw it away. The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed, I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights.
Tony BennThere is a very big difference between American and British travel journalism, and that's this whole business of the assisted or freebie trip. In Britain we are unashamed about any travel company paying for you to go and then writing about it. That's the only way we can do it. But I have tried the same in the States, and I can't write for any sizeable American newspaper because they tell you to do it on this basis.
John GimletteA ley line is what might be called a field of force, a trail of telluric energy. There are hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, all over Britain, and they've been around since the Stone Age.
Stephen R. LawheadIn Britain, the press want to kill a show by revealing what's coming up and spoiling the pleasure.
Hugh BonnevilleI remember being in China and realising how irrelevant not even Britain is, but also Europe. We're just another remote country that hardly impinges on some places at all.
Clive AndersonIt [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 are very few chefs both in Britain and the States that really identify the secret of being consistent. And combine consistency with flavor.
Gordon RamsaySuddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - old churches, country lanes, people saying 'Mustn't grumble,' and 'I'm terribly sorry but,' people apologizing to ME when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, tea and crumpets, summer showers and foggy winter evenings - every bit of it.
Bill BrysonI couldn't speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I'm regarded as one of their own in Japan.
Kazuo IshiguroBritain is producing some of the worst films in the world. Our film industry is desperate to be part of America, and we just churn out flaccid imitations of bad films over there.
Catherine McCormackI live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.
Jonathan CoeThis rationale, which justified the mixed constitution of Great Britain, might have made some sense in 1776, but by 1787 most American thinkers had come to believe that all parts of their balanced governments represented in one way or another the sovereign people. They had left the Aristotelian idea of mixed estates - monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy - way behind. [John] Adams had not, and his stubbornness on this point caused him no end of trouble.
Gordon S. WoodThe Soviet Union tried to sell a set of ideas, very left wing, and focus on so-called peace. Vladimir Putin doesn't care who helps him to push his agenda. He is equally comfortable with the politics of Nigel Farage and Corbyn in Britain, Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mรฉlenchon in France. Whether far left or nationalist, he doesn't care, as long as they support chaos and destruction and the undermining of existing institutions.
Garry KasparovI always say to anybody who's going over to America for the first time, 'Whatever you do, go and see a popular mainstream film with a big audience.' Because people shout out. You never get that in Britain. Everybody's so quiet, scared to laugh. It's like being in church.
Danny BoyleCivil servants are fully aware of the challenges the British economy faces. They are, after all, working tirelessly and professionally to support the coalition government through the current challenges, every day, and in every part of Britain.
Gus O'Donnell, Baron O'DonnellI think we've come a long way since then. The big thing that changed was when ecstasy came along in Britain.
Neil TennantI live in LA so I worry my kids aren't that connected to Britain, I suppose I don't want them to become American kids. We try to get back three or four times a year. When they go to school they speak with a British-American accent but when they come home to us they go back to their British accent, so I can deal with that.
Kevin McKiddOne of the most heartening phenomena in today's Britain is the great diversity of the modern nerd - the nerd is out and proud, and while she may love 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' merchandise more than is strictly warranted, she is in every way to be cherished as an exemplar of cosmopolitanism and tolerance.
Will SelfPutin is a despot, and he's a very good despot. And he will see things in a narrow way. What is good for Russia? That is what he will do. If that's represented by a move toward the Baltic, that would be very dangerous, but he would do it, on the assumption that he would ask himself the question: I am prepared to fight for Estonia. Is the United States? Is Germany? Is Britain, France?
Marvin KalbWe have to see that we're a part of each other, and we have to take care of each other. The reason why they have universal health care in Canada and Britain, these other places? Because they believe if one suffers, everybody suffers.
Michael MooreFor the second time in history the Conservatives will have a female prime minster, proving that we are not just the greatest but the most progressive party in Britain.
Andrea LeadsomI'll wear no convicts uniform nor meekly serve my time that Britain might brand Irelands fight 800 years of crime.
Bobby SandsBy the time I had finished my coffee and returned to the streets, the rain had temporarily abated, but the streets were full of vast puddles where the drains where unable to cope with the volume of water. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you would think that if one nation ought by now to have mastered the science of drainage, Britain would be it.
Bill BrysonThe ban doesn't have anything to do with Livestrong or my ability to work in [the cancer] community. Perhaps it speeds it up. I don't know the examples in Great Britain of athletes who have fallen. I know the examples in the United States - the Tiger Woods, the Michael Vicks, even the Bill Clintons - people who are still out there able to work.
Lance ArmstrongWhen I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don't like it you can change it.
Tony BennIn Britain, we haven't got enough money to make these long-running shows. We always do little mini ones. You have more control as an actor over what you want to do with it. On these you drive yourself mad trying to know what's going to happen, because the writers don't.
Ruth WilsonIn 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 HumeNo theory of government was ever given a fairer test or a more prolonged experiment in a democratic country than democratic socialism received in Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every respect... To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukemia with leeches.
Margaret Thatcher