Quotes About Britain

'A Naval History of Britain' which begins in the 7th century has to explain what it means by Britain. My meaning is simply the British Isles as a whole, but not any particular nation or state or our own day... 'Britain' is not a perfect word for this purpose, but 'Britain and Ireland' would be both cumbersome and misleading, implying an equality of treatment which is not possible. Ireland and the Irish figure often in this book, but Irish naval history, in the sense of the history of Irish fleets, is largely a history of what might have been rather than what actually happened.

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.

I came to office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society - from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it-yourself nation. A get-up-and-go, instead of a sit-back-and-wait-for-it Britain.

Before then, Britain was pessimistic and the role of government was largely managing Britain in decline.

Britain's continuing membership of the Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation...

(I)t is highly questionable whether when 'Europe speaks with one voice', as we are so often told it is doing, anyone is really listening. Europe's reputation as a serious player in international affairs is unenviable. It is a feeble giant who desperate attempts to be taken seriously are largely risible. It has a weak currency and a sluggish inflexible economy, still much reliant on hidden protectionism. It has a shrinking, ageing, population and, with the exception of Britain, rather unimpressive armed forces and, not excepting Britain, muddled diplomacy.

Our first benchmark is to cut the deficit more quickly to safeguard Britain’s 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.

In Britain, by contrast, we still think that class plays a part in determining a person's life chances, so we're less inclined to celebrate success and less inclined to condemn failure. The upshot is that it's much easier to be a failure in Britain than it is in America.

In Britain, like most of the developed world, stem-cell research is regarded as a great opportunity. America will be left behind if it doesn't change policy.

And I don't really have anyone upon whom I want to rain down my wrath," I said, because in truth I didn't. I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies. Example: Historically, Germany has had more enemies than Luxembourg, Margo Roth Spiegelman was Germany. And Great Britain. And the United States. And czarist Russia. Me, I'm Luxembourg. Just sitting around, tending sheep, and yodeling.

There's unrecognizable change happening in Britain. The life prospects and job prospects, particularly of working-class people, have been severely dented. Without anyone being asked.

When 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!

In no country has the historical blackout been more intense and effective than in Great Britain. Here it has been ingeniously christened The Iron Curtain of Discreet Silence. Virtually nothing has been written to reveal the truth about British responsibility for the Second World War and its disastrous results.

We've had American TV shows in Britain for years and that hasn't affected our culture at all.

Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods. It would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but "to bind us in all cases whatsoever," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious, for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

We had to do what we had to do - Britain is great again.

I 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.

The 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.

But I am an optimist about Britain; and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is not that the optimist believes the world is wonderful and the pessimist believes it's beset by challenges; the difference is the pessimist believes we will be defeated by them; the optimist thinks the challenges can be overcome.

If 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.

There 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.

In Britain, the press want to kill a show by revealing what's coming up and spoiling the pleasure.

In Britain, class is a neurosis. You judge people from the moment they open their mouth and start speaking: what their accent represents in terms of where they were educated, what part of the country they're from, what kind of class background they have.

Britain cherishes her eccentrics and wisely holds that the function of government is to build a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish.

As ever with modern Britain, we are let down by a vast, over-manned, over-funded, hidebound, obstructive, box-ticking and incompetent bureaucracy.

There 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.

Britain's success in the exploitation of non-European races raised the ambition of Bismarck and later Mussolini and others.

Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be too clever by half. The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.

I know some of my parents' friends think 'Little Britain' is in incredibly poor taste. But swimming the Channel? You can't really say anything negative about that, can you? There's nothing better than making your parents happy. The glee on my father's face that day was amazing.

In the end it may well be that Britain will be honored by the historians more for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she acquired it.

Crown 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.

Great Britain provided time; the United States provided money and Soviet Russia provided blood.

I left Britain in the mid-1990s when TV was going down the cundy - another good Dundee word - because I wanted a film career. But as I get older, I find myself being drawn back to my roots, and I'm loving it.

[To the suggestion that Great Britain might someday want a Republic:] We'll go quietly.

This 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.

... the reason is that a military defeat of Britain will bring about the disintegration of the British Empire. This would not be of any benefit to Germany.

I own a home in Sweden, I rent in both Los Angeles and in Britain, and I'm constantly travelling.

Leaving [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.

Eighty percent of the people of Britain want more money spent on public transport — in order that other people will travel on the buses so that there is more room for them to drive their cars.

I grew up on Bond, and it is part of my culture, especially in Britain. Just to be known as a Bond girl is an incredible thing for me, because some of my favorite actresses have been Bond girls, like Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman, and they have continued to work and be brilliant. I am honored and flattered to be called that, even though I don't really think my character is Bond-girly, but I'm still going to be labeled as a Bond girl, which is completely brilliant.

The Anglo-Saxon farmers had scarce conquered foothold, stronghold, freehold in the Western wilderness before they became sowers of hemp--with remembrance of Virginia, with remembrance of dear ancestral Britain.

I was into David Bowie. I attracted long hair and earrings when it was quite a risque thing to do in Dublin. We didn't have the liberation that America and Britain in the '60s but I did always look to England and America, mainly because of the music that came from there.

Something is happening to Britain and the British. Or has happened. We are said to be passing through a transition, or a turning point, or a transformation; nobody is quite sure which.

The campaign in Iraq illustrates the continuing progress of military technology and tactics, but if there is a single overriding lesson it must be this: American military power, especially when buttressed by Britain's, is virtually unchallengeable today. Take us on? Don't try! And that's not hubris, it's just plain fact.

I 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.

From Britain's point of view the 1939 war had been a liberal war which had been entered into in a condition of moral indignation without the resources to fight it, that it had been providential good fortune which had placed the burden of fighting on the Russians and the Americans.

Since 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.

Failure in Afghanistan would have profound consequences for our national security. It would undermine the NATO alliance structure that has been the bedrock of Britain's defence for the last 60 years... I will not allow this to happen on my watch.