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Taxation, the very thing that had triggered the British civil wars, would do so again, this time in America. The taxes may have been different, but the result would once again be disaster. What happened in America was really round two of those wars - the civil war of the British Empire, with the Hanoverians playing the part of the Stuarts, and the Americans the heirs of the revolutionaries, of Cromwell and of William III, the inheritors of a true British liberty, that had somehow got lost in its own motherland.
Simon SchamaI do not think the British want to become America's "Airstrip One," as the British Isles are called in George Orwell's "1984." The EU's internal market was a massive success even before the UK joined it, and it joined because there was no real alternative. So while British tabloids are expecting to be punished by Germany, Brexit is punishment in itself.
Anthony GleesNow, the United States' response, the western response to this is a continuation of the appeasement that was started back in the '50s with Eisenhower when Iran seized western oil companies. The Americans, the British, and the Israelis, as I remember, launched an attack to try to reclaim it and - or at least the British and the Israelis did and Eisenhower vetoed it.
Leonard PeikoffNo medieval monarch in the whole of British history ever had such power as every modern British Prime Minister has in his or her hands. Nor does any American President have power approaching this
Tony BennThose original, black, spirited, defiant, rebellious musical masters. Chuck Berry was one of the first masters of Les Paul's new electric guitar; he pretty much laid down the gauntlet, and I don't think anybody's ever beat him since. Way before the British Invasion, I was tuned into the black guys that created the British Invasion. Without Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and the Motown hits, there would be no Beatles.
Ted NugentI 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 McKiddBritish rule depends upon repression and collaboration and the Irish people should recognise that those who collaborate with Britain in exchange for a slice of the cake will implement British policy and remain silent when Irish people are murdered and oppressed. It is they who are responsible for prolonging the war in Ireland. Without the quislings, without the collaborators, we would already have reached freedom.
Martin McGuinnessI went to a British Council event a while back and there were lots of German professors of literature. About half of them were convinced I had a German sense of humour and the other half were sure it was British. They are probably still arguing about it now.
Tibor FischerWe did not lack for religious leaders to urge us into "godly" war [...]. All of this was part of a well-financed propaganda campaign on the part of British agents. As usual, the government of the United States was being "run" by the British Secret Intelligence Service.
Eustace MullinsThe problem with the British film industry is that it's really the American film industry, or a small branch of in lots of ways because of the common language. But it's great to see some individual voices still there. I think I probably gravitate towards a slightly more European, auteur model rather than the studio thing. I think it would be great if British films were a little bit more auteur driven.
David MackenzieI 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.
John OliverEveryone the world over talks about British actors and British talent and I think thats because we were trained - until now - in theatre.
Brenda BlethynPeople say, "How do you get into the British film industry?" There is no British film industry, there are just people making films and finding their own way. It's not like in the States where there are studios and there's an actual infrastructure to it; there's just nothing here. You make it from scratch a lot of the time.
Ben WheatleyThe British Empire was so vast and so powerful, the sun would never set on it. This is how big it was, yet these 13 little scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire, liberty or death.
Malcolm XWe Scots have a fierce pride in the things we do that others can never appreciate. I am the British No. 1, but I would prefer to be the British No. 1 from Scotland every time.
Andy MurrayToday a Scot is leading a British army in France [Field Marshall Douglas Haig], another is commanding the British Grand Fleet at sea [Admiral David Beatty], while a third directs the Imperial General Staff at home [Sir William Roberton]. The Lord Chancellor is a Scot [Viscount Finlay]; so are the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary [Bonar Law and Arthur Balfour]. The Prime Minister is a Welshman [David Lloyd George], and the First Lord of the Admiralty is an Irishman [Lord Carson]. Yet no one has ever brought in a bill to give home rule to England!
John Hay BeithMy mother's family came from the British West Indies. And my father's family came from, well, my father's father came from the Montana/South Dakota area. They were Blackfoot Indian.
Richie HavensI joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilization, and I would not have her (Britain) say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions.
Francis LedwidgeYou have heard of the new chemical nomenclature endeavored to be introduced by Lavoisier, Fourcroy, &c. Other chemists of this country, of equal note, reject it, and prove in my opinion that it is premature, insufficient and false. These latter are joined by the British chemists; and upon the whole, I think the new nomenclature will be rejected, after doing more harm than good. There are some good publications in it, which must be translated into the ordinary chemical language before they will be useful.
Thomas JeffersonThe British keep employing me, and that makes me like them. It also makes me think they're very intelligent.
John CusackMountain Pine bark beetles need -37ยฐC (-35ยฐF) 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.
Mark Leiren-YoungWe 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.
David Ben-GurionI considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other.
Thomas JeffersonI 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!
Philip PullmanIn 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.
Harry Elmer BarnesWe've always had a pretty competitive and pretty ferocious battle with British Airways... It's lasted now about 14 years, and we're very pleased to have survived it.
Richard BransonThere is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual.
Catherine Drinker BowenIf the general attitude of Canadians toward their mighty neighbor to the south could be distilled into a single phrase, that phrase would probably be "Oh, shut up." The Americans talked too much, mainly about themselves. Their torrid love affair with their own history and legend exceeded-painfully-the quasi-British Canadian idea of modesty and self-restraint. ... They were forever busting their buttons in spasms of insufferable yahoo pride or all too publicly agonizing over their crises.
Bruce McCall[British television series] Hammer House of Horror. I used to really enjoy these one-off stories where often there would be an incredibly cruel twist. A good example is the episode with Burgess Meredith and there's a nuclear war and he drops his glasses. To this day, you can show that to anyone and they'll go "Bwrrrrrrrr!" You know, sort of wander away shuddering.
Charlie BrookerI get nostalgic for British negativity. There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers. When you go back to Britain, everybody is just running everything down. It's like whatever the opposite of a hug is.
John OliverBritish fans are exceptional, but the American fans are something else. Some of them fly 500 miles to stand in line for three hours, just to meet me, then when they do they collapse.
Craig CharlesThe 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 HillI'm not Tom Cruise. Very few British actors are. If you look at the body of work I've done it's pretty obvious I'm not going to make a 'Mission: Impossible.'
Jude LawNothing lasts forever, whether it's Greece, Rome or the British Empire. It doesn't mean that America has to end. The country could be reshaped and reimagined in a way that is even more democratic and less imperial in nature. We're trying to radically reshape the nation in ways that are more just and fairer. That's what I mean when I say that empires eventually fall. I'm not calling for the end of America. I'm just calling for a reimagination of its democratic possibilities.
Marc Lamont Hill...it is not only the general principles of justice that are infringed, or at least set aside, by the exclusion of women, merely as women, from any share in the representation; that exclusion is also repugnant to the particular principles of the British Constitution. It violates one of the oldest of our constitutional maxims...that taxation and representation should be co-extensive. Do not women pay taxes?
John Stuart MillI am not a British isolationist. I don't just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too.
David CameronThere 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 GimletteBritish 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 think it would be a problem if Hollywood was casting British actors only as villains; if that were the case, then certainly there would be cause for concern.
Alfred MolinaI'm a big fan of British cinema; I think we make some unbelievably brilliant films, but they can quite often have a dark feel.
Ed SpeleersThere can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.
Bobby Sands