Popular quotes about British! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
In the late 1930s, both the British and American movie industries made a succession of films celebrating the decency of the British Empire in order to challenge the threatening tide of Nazism and fascism and also to provide employment for actors from Los Angeles's British colony. The best two were Hollywood's Gunga Din and Britain's The Four Feathers...
Philip FrenchI have no idea what a British sensibility or a British sense of humor is. I have no concept of what that is. I have no concept of what American sensibility is. I was born in Great Britain, but I was only there for six months, and we moved to Belgium, where I grew up. I love Britain, I lived there for nine years doing shows and things, but I don't know what a British sensibility is. I'd like to have someone tell me what an American sensibility is.
Frank OzI think British humour is very cruel, and gay humour is very cruel. I think the two go hand-in-hand and that's why they mix so well in England. I think that's why you get so many gay comedians in England that are accepted so well because British humour is very cruel. I love it.
Jason SellardsYou will hear people say the C-word. Except, it's a regional language: in British English, c - t has much less of an inflammatory sense than it does in North American English. You can hear someone on British TV called "a c - ting monkey" or a man being called a c - t. The particular fascination of profanity is how culturally specific it is and how it evolves.
Kory StamperArmed struggle is a necessary and morally correct form of resistance in the Six Counties against a government whose presence is rejected by the vast majority of the Irish people There are those who tell us that the British government will not be moved by armed struggle. As has been said before, the history of Ireland and of British colonial involvement throughout the world tells us that they will not be moved by anything else.
Gerry AdamsWe are a British nation with British characteristics. Every country can take some small minorities and in many ways they add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened.
Margaret ThatcherI 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 McKiddThe British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff.
Will SelfNo British politician has ever been more despised by the British people than Margaret Thatcher.
Steven MorrisseyIn the past, people couldn't place me. They thought that I was Danish or English or French. They never got that I am Italian. I'm not typical, maybe because my visual education was very mixed. There was a lot of London in my aesthetic: The Face, i-D, British music, and a lot of British fashion . . . But I really enjoy this contrast.
Italo ZucchelliThe trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their heads together and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it. To the eternal glory of British science, their labour bore fruit.
George MikesIt always interested me that 'Goodness Gracious Me' and 'The Kumars,' when shown around the world, were referred to as British comedy. It was only here that they were referred to as Asian comedy, even though I always felt it was very British in its humour and structure.
Sanjeev BhaskarMy father and I had a good relationship, it was very relaxed. He had a lot of humour. He looked a little bit like me, although he had no beard. He had the appearance of a very elegant British-looking man.
Michael HanekeHis scowl returned. "Why, if they're supposed to be Greek, are all of them speaking with an English accent?" She laughed. "Didn't you know that British is, like, the universal 'foreign' language in Hollywood? They use it in any movie where they want to have a foreign feel to it, regardless of where it's set
Sherrilyn KenyonIf the British think they can simply detach from the continent and sail towards the USA or China, then they are mistaken.
Yanis VaroufakisI do not wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries; that what used to be called the submerged tenth can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their le.
Winston ChurchillI would love to play a British character one day. My accent wavers between Scottish and Irish very easily, though.
Chris LilleyFurther, not only the United States, but the French, British, Germans and the United Nations all thought Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction before the United States intervened.
Jim GerlachThe British are absolutely hung up on class, and whenever they start to really - class for the English is like sex for Americans: They start to shake all over when the subject comes up.
Gore VidalWhen the invasion began, the British public was called upon to 'support' troops sent illegally and undemocratically to kill people with whom we had no quarrel. 'The ultimate test of our professionalism' is how Commander McKendrick describes an unprovoked attack on a nation with no submarines, no navy and no air force, and now with no clean water and no electricity and, in many hospitals, no anaesthetic with which to amputate small limbs shredded by shrapnel. I have seen elsewhere how this is done, with a gag in the patient's mouth.
John PilgerI think it's important that we have a new batch of British film-makers that aren't doing the same old stuff. And that includes me.
Noel ClarkeAmong the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.
Mahatma GandhiThe British tend to shy away from the spotlight. We don't like being singled out in any way, and I think that is something which is important for me to learn to do.
Damon HillIreland is such a young society. The British were the ruling class up until they left about a hundred years ago, and we've been trying to work out what our class hierarchy is ever since.
Tana FrenchHow will the exit affect thousands of British pensioners living in Portugal or Spain who will lose their access to the welfare and health systems? Fifty-three free-trade agreements, which were negotiated by the EU on behalf of all Member States, are also hanging in the balance for the UK.
Jean-Claude JunckerThe first part of my career was indeed as a performer and recording artist, and I am still keenly involved with both. While rummaging around in the British Library, I found many delightful and interesting compositions by 18th-century men and women composers.
Barbara HarbachBritish business is disappointed that the MPC felt unable to act more boldly to counter the worsening economic circumstances and the sharp slowdown in the pace of economic activity,.
David FrostI am confident that in the end freedom and democracy will prevail over terror and tyranny. We will win this war on terror - and when we do Americans, the British, Iraqis, and people around the world will be more secure.
Doc HastingsTo all the revolutionaries fighting to throw off the yoke of tyranny around the world: look at British democracy. Is that what you want?
Andy ZaltzmanWe British play an important role in Europe, even if we have a traditional and historical ambivalence towards the continent.
Lionel BarberThe British press are a group of unremitting scumbags. And sometimes they use that scumbaggery to good ends, and often not.
John OliverMy colleagues and I are of that generation of young men who went through the Second World War and the Japanese Occupation and emerged determined that no oneโneither Japanese nor Britishโhad the right to push and kick us around. We determined that we could govern ourselves and bring up our children in a country where we can be proud to be self-respecting people.
Lee Kuan YewDad loved movies and I grew up with British comedy. My ultimate favourite is Peter Sellers.
Mike MyersImagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.
Terry EagletonThe Egba kingdom was one of the very last to be ceded to the British protectorate. It remained almost an independent entity within what is now known as Nigeria, simply because of its own traditional structure of governance.
Wole SoyinkaMy job is to support businesses, that means promoting British commerce in the big emerging markets that have been neglected in the past. It means keeping Britain open to inward investors, trade and skilled workers. It means cutting red tape which is suffocating growing companies which create jobs.
Vince CableLet us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'
Winston ChurchillOn the Northern Ireland question, for instance, the British and Irish governments prohibit media contact with members of the IRA, but we have always gone ahead, believing in the right to information.
Kate AdieWe weren't getting a fair deal on the budget and I wasn't going to have it. There's a great strand of equity and fairness in the British people - this is our characteristic. There's not a strand of equity and fairness in Europe - they're out to get as much as they can. That's one of those enormous differences. So I tackled it on that basis.
Margaret Thatcher...He went to Scotland and studied under Lister...("Lister was persecuted by the British Medical Association. He was threatened with having his license revoked.") Yet in Lister's hospital virtually no one died as a result of operations because Lister had developed a carbolic acid wash and disinfectant. Dr. Keen came back from Scotland...He was referred to as a crazy Listerite.....He was denied an opportunity to practice in every hospital in Philadelphia.
Paul DouglasIn 1973 we moved to the British Isle of Man, and I put my first band together for one year, named Melody Fair.
Andy GibbI will not accept a new wave of fiscal retrenchment, of belt-tightening, without asking people at the top to make their contribution, to make an additional contribution. I don't think you can ask people on middle and low incomes, who, after all, are the vast majority of the British population, to bear the brunt of this adjustment.
Nick CleggThe fact is, some of the most respected scientific bodies in the world, including Codex Alimentarius (jointly run by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations), the American Medical Association, the British Medical Association, and the American Public Health Association, have stated that more research needs to be done on GMOs through premarket safety assessments before we can truthfully determine their safety.
Zoe Lister-Jones