Quotes About British

The British are proud of their ability to create a muddle and then muddle through all difficulties. I must shake the British pride: muddle is not an exclusively British institution. Read descriptions, for instance, of the over-organized, wonderfully systematic and "thorough" German war machine during the last war.

...The British press... [claimed that Tony] Blair was simply Bush's poodle - a favorite phrase, bewilderingly popular, although it made no sense - and that he was ignoring the will of the British people. Considering the hacks had spent Blair's first six years in office condemning him for relying on focus groups and opinion polls for his policies - in other words, paying attention to nothing but the will of the people, or at least their whims - that seemed a little rich to me, but as I said, logical consistency has never figured highly in the British media's scale of values.

I 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.

With the ministry's motto 'Research on a Shoestring' emblazoned on his coat of arms, he has to struggle with a treasury more interested in surtax relief than national survival. [Responding to an earlier statement by British Science Minister, Lord Hailsham, that British scientists were being recruited by the U.S.]

There are actually quite high profile British TV star cameos in it that you probably wouldn't even notice, that the British wouldn't even notice, let alone the American audience.

The most foreign fighters in Iraq are wearing British and American uniforms. The level of self-delusion is bordering frankly on the racist. The vast majority of the people of Iraq are against the occupation of Iraq by the American and British forces.

Californians don't have that marvelous British cynicism, but then the British can be so patronizing at times.

Nigel Farage, even if you don`t follow British politics, he`s a British politician but you may recognize him from his frequent visits to the United States, for example, his time at Trump Tower. You may recognize him from his time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump.

I think Americans still can't help but respond to the natural authority of this voice. Deep down they long to be told what to do by a British accent. That's why so many infomercials have British people.

The British Army should be a projectile to be fired by the British Navy.

Commanders and senior officers should die with troops. The honour of the British Empire and the British Army is at stake.

More than 55,000 men from Bomber Command lost their lives, of whom 38,000 were British. That's one in 10 of all the British servicemen lost in the Second World War. It beggars belief that there has not been some recognition for what they gave until now.

The problem with being British... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic, but you never really enjoy success.

Jimmy Greaves and Kenny Dalglish had similar know-how, but Dalglish's knowledge and reading of the game was far superior. He was the most complete footballer in British soccer.

The Americans are identical to the British in all respects except, of course, language.

Mountain Pine bark beetles need -37°C (-35°F) for three days to freeze to death. Unfortunately, with global warming, that no longer happens in British Columbia [Canada]. This means the population of the beetles have exploded. They have destroyed more forests than all the environmentalists put together have saved.

The British press has been unfair to me and the public has followed.

Germany will continue to play a central - perhaps even a more important - role in the European Union. I think that we will all miss the pragmatic approach of the British, however, particularly in those long nights of negotiation.

We must assist the British in the war as if there were no White Paper and we must resist the White Paper as if there were no war.

Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization - this tea ritual and the detective novel.

I've been a Danish prince, a Texas slave-dealer, an Arab sheik, a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, and a Yankee navy lieutenant in my time, among other things, and none of 'em was as hard to sustain as my lifetime's impersonation of a British officer and gentleman.

I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction!

I don't think the British carry a historical consciousness either.

British actors behave like Europeans; they are also extremely well trained.

I was in Britain that year [1963] and some music publishing people in Denmark Street in London suggested me to the BBC. So I found myself in front of a British television show, which was a nice surprise.

It is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.

If the British Empire is fated to pass from life into history, we must hope it will not be by the slow process of dispersion and decay, but in some supreme exertion for freedom, for right and for truth.

I'm quite proud of what I anticipated about reality television from my books in the early '90s, which I based on the early seasons of 'Cops' and on the amazing stuff I had read about happening on Japanese shows and the British 'Big Brother'.

I like a tranquil, even-keeled, self-controlled God. A God who doesn't fly off the handle at the least provocation. A God who lives one step above the fray. A God who has that British stiff upper lip even when disaster is looming. When I read my Bible, though, I keep running into a different God, and I'm not pleased. This God says he "hates" sin. Well, he usually yells it. Read the prophets. It's just one harangue after another, all in loud decibels. And when the shouting is over, then comes the pouting. ... When all else fails, he throws himself in front of the car.

By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. . . . I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence - which is a noble thing. Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat.

The confidence and security of a people can be measured by their attitude toward laxatives. At the high noon of the British sun, soldiers in far-flung outposts of the Empire doctored themselves with "a spoonful o' gunpowder in a cuppa 'ot tea." Purveyors and users of harsh laxatives were not afraid of being thought mean and unfriendly just because their laxatives were. But in America, the need to be nice is so consuming that nobody would dare take a laxative that makes you run up the stairs two at a time, pushing others aside and yelling, "Get out of the way!

We have lost the good old British spirit. Instead we have American journalism and black-shirted buffoons making a cheap imitation of ice-cream sellers.

My comedic instinct, is a little bit more rooted in - my mother's British so I've always been more of the dry receiver of the crazy as opposed to the initiator of the crazy. I'm kind of predisposed to be the straight man.

If you read the 'Daily Mail,' you would imagine that the British middle classes lead lives of unremitting misery.

My love of the British is equal to that of my own people.

We British play an important role in Europe, even if we have a traditional and historical ambivalence towards the continent.

Although socialism is widely held by the establishment to be outdated, the things that are most popular in British society today are little pockets of socialism, where areas of life have been excluded from the crude operation of market forces and are protected for the benefit of the community

What did I want with prestige? The British Open paid the winner $600 in American money. A man would have to be two hundred years old at that rate to retire from golf.

Dad loved movies and I grew up with British comedy. My ultimate favourite is Peter Sellers.

Look, I've always said from the word go many years ago that I felt the whole bonus culture, they need to think very carefully about being detached from the rest of the British public.

Let 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.'

It would be a blunder of the first magnitude for the British to be a party, in any way whatsoever, to the division of India.

On one occasion, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons and myself were due to appear at the Sarajevo film festival and were turned off a UN plane on orders from Geneva. We had to get local journalists to transport the films in for us. I tell you this only to demonstrate that festivals can be a lifeline. But, after all the difficulties I'd had in getting there, in 1996 I found myself being flown in on a four-seater RAF plane as an official guest, endorsed by the British Embassy. Ironically, the film I was to present was Mission: Impossible.

If there be a God, I think he would like me to paint Africa British-Red as possible.

There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev. He had a wonderful influence

Shakespeare villains were extraordinary. Macbeth, Iago, Richard III... They're so richly layered that a British actor would find it almost impossible to create a two-dimensional villain, if he's explored in his early years or continues to explore his Shakespearean heritage. You can almost not judge them, if they're played really well.

At the end of the day, flirting is a pretty universal language. Americans are more direct. British people are more indirect about everything

Whether people watch Doctor Who or not over here, everybody knows about it. It's a British icon, it's so part of the nation.