Popular quotes about Britain! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 5
Britain deserves better than people who say they've got a quick fix but won't tell you what it actually means for Britain, we need a much bigger conversation than this.
Ruth DavidsonNow 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 do miss things about Britain. I think there was a misconception, there definitely was, that I left because of bad press, and being pilloried. I left Britain because I fell in love with someone who lived in Switzerland - that was the main thing.
Phil CollinsOur first benchmark is to cut the deficit more quickly to safeguard Britainโs credit rating. I know that we are taking a political gamble to set this up as a measure of success. Protecting the credit rating will not be easy The pace of fiscal consolidation will be co-ordinated with monetary policy. And we will protect Britain's credit rating and international reputation.
George OsborneWhen I warned them [the French] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken. Some chicken! Some neck!
Winston ChurchillI see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work. And with the disappearance of its rentier aspect much else in it besides will suffer a sea-change. It will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events which I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor, will be nothing sudden, merely a gradual but prolonged continuance of what we have seen recently in Great Britain, and will need no revolution.
John Maynard KeynesWe from every religion feel comfortable in Britain because there is a host. The Church of England is a good host, it has been a major force in shaping England into such a tolerant society.
Jonathan SacksI think that the people of Great Britain have had enough of experts with organisations from acronyms saying - from organisations with acronyms - saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong, because these people - these people - are the same ones who got consistently wrong.
Michael GoveIn America, there seems to be more focus on the idea that it's important to do things differently. In Britain, it's not an issue.
Thom YorkeThe first modern propaganda agency was the British Ministry of Information a century ago, which secretly defined its task as "to direct the thought of most of the world" - primarily progressive American intellectuals, who had to be mobilized to come to the aid of Britain during World War I.
Noam ChomskyI was brought up and raised in Britain as a Labour man, and that quickly changed. And I find there are more working-class people in the Conservative Party than the Labour party.
John LydonEvery 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 mean a global warming advocate is as wrong as anybody could be about anything, folks. It's a hoax. There is no man-made global warming. It has been thoroughly debunked. The fact that it's a hoax has been proven, by them. E-mails that were uncovered at East Anglia University in Great Britain show that they worked together to perpetuate the hoax, that they lied about data, that they eliminate data that contradicted their political belief. So you'd have to assume from that that they are political advocates disguised as scientists who are purposely engaging in misinformation.
Rush LimbaughThe Road To Serfdom was written during WWII, and basically it's an anti-Nazi, anti-communist thing, but also it's an anti-Conservative and anti-Labor-party thing aimed at the British. He was an Austrian, writing in Britain. And I feel like now, I guess, everybody pays lip service to libertarian - and, indeed, many conservative - ideas, and yet they keep moving forward with an increasingly bureaucratic state. It shows itself in all sorts of little ways.
P. J. O'RourkeFundamental systemic crises are often associated with the decline of the dominant imperial power and its increasing inability to sustain the system over which it had previously presided. The profound instability of the interwar period owed much to Britain's inability to maintain its role.
Martin JacquesT.S. Eliot, who learned to swim at the same beach as I did, just threw in the towel and moved to Cheyne Walk. I'm not going to do that but I'm not scared of the open channel between me and Britain.
William MonahanIf he was an inch taller he'd be the best center half in Britain. His father is 6 ft 2 in - I'd check the milkman.
Alex FergusonI only do children's films now! I think when you go to LA some people feel you've defected a little bit and that's not really the case. Ideally, I would love to work here and to work in America. That's in an ideal world. In fact, I came back to Britain recently to do an ITV1 drama that will be out in April for a couple of months! But I'm flying back to LA to do a pilot season. So, to work in both places is great.
Ashley JensenIt does not seem to me that the steps which would be needed to make Britain - and others - more comfortable in their relationship in the European Union are inherently so outlandish or unreasonable.
David CameronThe transition to a low-carbon economy will be one of the defining issues of the 21st century. This plan sets out a route-map for the UK's transition from here to 2020...every business, every community will need to be involved. Together we can create a more secure, more prosperous low carbon Britain and a world which is sustainable for future generations.
Ed MilibandI 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. WellsThe monarchy is so extraordinarily useful. When Britain wins a battle she shouts, God save the Queen; when she loses, she votes down the prime minister.
Winston ChurchillThere 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 CableBritain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.
J. B. PriestleyGreat Britain provided time; the United States provided money and Soviet Russia provided blood.
Joseph StalinI 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 Coe[To the suggestion that Great Britain might someday want a Republic:] We'll go quietly.
Queen Elizabeth IITrump's election is part of an international trend that's no less alarming, in Britain, in France, in Germany, in Austria. Vladimir Putin wanted to see this outcome no less than he would like to see nationalists and anti-Europeanists win in France.
David RemnickThe first time The Runaways played in Britain, Joan Jett wore my bullet belt onstage. The Runaways were really the first all-girl band to really strut their stuff and say, "F**k you." "Cherry Bomb" was the best song for a girl band to sing. It was just outrageous at the time. There were American families sitting on the sofa watching television going, "F**k me." It was great fun.
Lemmy KilmisterThe Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the future of Christian civilisation.
Winston ChurchillOne 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 SelfLeaving [from EU] will allow us to return real democratic control to important areas of national life; from international trade, the right to work and live in Britain to business regulation.
Gisela StuartIt was on this day that the Bahamas declared independence. Before that they were a British colony. The British Empire lost Canada and the Bahamas, to name just a couple. Britain's been dumped more times than Taylor Swift. But did they go writing whining songs about it? No.
Craig FergusonIt remains overwhelmingly and compellingly in Britain's national interest that the EU should succeed.
Theresa MayJacobitism involved much more than a debate about the merits of a particular dynasty. Men and women were well aware that its success was almost certain to involved them in civil war. And the more politically educated knew that the Stuart Pretender was a pawn in a worldwide struggle for commercial and imperial primacy between Britain and France.
Linda ColleyYesterday, the president met with a group he calls the coalition of the willing. Or, as the rest of the world calls them, Britain and Spain.
Jon StewartNow Europe are experiencing a wave of eroding solidarity, first of certain societies and then entire governments. At the same time, we have two giant new challenges to meet: the migration movement and terror. And then Great Britain is thinking about leaving the EU. That should suffice as a description.
Martin SchulzThe next Prime Minister walking through that door will be me or Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, you can choose an economy that grows, that creates jobs, that generates the money to ensure a properly funded and improving National Health Service ... and a government that will cut taxes for 30 million hard-working people ... or you can choose the economic chaos of Ed Miliband's Britain.
David CameronThe Romans held Britain from the invasion of Julius Caesar till their voluntary withdrawal from the island, A.D. 420,- that is, about five hundred years.
Thomas BulfinchSince the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland wants to remain a part of Great Britain, and since Ireland itself has shown little interest in reunification, the IRA's prospects for success through political channels have always been limited.
James SurowieckiThe immediate success of the war poem anthologies ... proved that the war had aroused in a new public an ear for contemporary verse ... There has never before, in the world's history, been an epoch which has tolerated and even welcomed such a flood of verse as has been poured forth over Great Britain during the last three years.
Edmund Gosse