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Dubai was brilliant, they looked around the world. They saw Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Chicago, Sydney, London all ran British common law. British common law is much better for commerce than is French common law or sharia law. So they took 110 acres of Dubai soil, put British common law with a British judge in charge, and they went from an empty piece of soil to the 16th most powerful financial center in [the] world in eight years.
Michael StrongMany people worked with the inspiration to free the country by throwing the British out. After formal departure of the British this inspiration slackened. In fact there was no need to have this much inspiration. We should remember that in our pledge we have talked of the freedom of the country through defending religion and culture. There is no mention of departure of the British in that.
M. S. GolwalkarTaxation, 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 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 came back and in '63, I was at the British Open, trying to win my first British Open. And I had what I thought was a two-shot lead with two holes to play at Lytham. I remember it like it was yesterday. Anybody with a proper brain would have played the ball short of the hole. I didn't have a proper brain at the time. But you have to make that mistake to learn it.
Jack NicklausI think I went through early years of my career sort of thinking, "Well, maybe I'm just not British enough." And I always remember my father saying to me, "Don't think you're English, because however English you feel, some Englishman is going to remind you that you're not." Now, for him it must have been a much more acute experience, because he immigrated to England. I was born there, so I kind of felt I had the right to assume that I was British, but it's true. The English are a very warm and welcoming people, but there's a streak in there that reminds you, occasionally.
Alfred MolinaI think my favorite is Honor Blackman because she is classy and she is British. With Bond, I love how British it is actually. She is classy and clever and smart and sharp.
Gemma ArtertonAmerica has had an influence on me, as has going out with a Cuban-American guy and having lots of American friends. But I am still fundamentally British and speak with a British accent and feel very English.
Lily ColeThe trouble with the British is that they are not interested in ideas. If Jesus came back today and offered to speak for an hour on British television, they would say, "What! Another talking head?
John CleeseI 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 FischerObviously it's my second senior event, and I'm tired obviously coming back from the British Open, from surgery, which was priority No. 1, did that successfully, and each week since the British Open I've felt in pretty good control of my golf game.
Greg NormanOnce, when a British Prime Minister sneezed, men half a world away would blow their noses. Now when a British Prime Minister sneezes nobody else will even say 'Bless You'.
Bernard LevinThe British Army should be a projectile to be fired by the British Navy.
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of FallodonYes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on.
James ConnollyEverything I do is autobiographical in some way. 'Wayne's World' was me growing up in the suburbs of Toronto and listening to heavy metal, and 'Austin Powers' was every bit of British culture that my father, who passed away in 1991, had forced me to watch and taught me to love.
Mike MyersSome people try to say I'm British by the way I'm speaking. But I think I'm more Canadian, because I speak really slow. Midwestern and Canadian.
Rich FulcherI have multiple identities. I'm British. I'm Pakistani. I'm a Muslim. I'm a writer. I'm a father. And each identity has rich overtones. So I must be careful to look at your identity, and that of others, in the same way.
Ziauddin SardarWhat will not luxury taste? Earth, sea, and air, Are daily ransack'd for the bill of fare. Blood stuffed in skins is British Christians' food, And France robs marshes of the croaking brood.
John GayAt the next election he'll offer the British public an alternative that provides weight and substance and seriousness in a political debate that is, frankly, increasingly obsessed with modishness and flim-flam.
Paddy AshdownI'm a big fan of British journalists like 'The Independentโs Robert Fisk, but it's hard to find voices like his in the U.S.
Jackson BrowneI think it's sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.
Orlando BloomI have been to Canada several times. It was autumn when I visited Vancouver and I will always remember the colour of the trees in British Columbia were stunning.
Natalie DormerIf 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 McCallEstablishing a client state in Iraq would significantly enhance that strategic power, a matter of great significance for the future. As Zbigniew Brzezinski observed, it would provide the US with "critical leverage" of its European and Asian rivals, a conception with roots in early post-war planning. These are substantial reasons for aggression - not unlike those of the British when they invaded and occupied Iraq over 80 years earlier, at the dawn of the oil age.
Noam ChomskyAll these stuff she's done before - the rosary, the deep thoughts, the faux British accent. It's the same thing over and over. She's be so much better if she just retired, and I like Madonna.
Andrea TantarosTo be able to hold all four majors - the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, PGA - all concurrently I think is the Grand Slam. But a lot of people have a different opinions on that. People think you have to win it in the same calendar year.
Tiger WoodsIn the period of '60s to the '90s, British art schools were small, and the number of student was small. The personal contact was great.
Michael Craig-MartinIt has not been the style of Canadian politicians to write of their experiences, although it is the common practice for British, French, and American Politicians upon their retirement. But I have been criticized before and I expect to be again.
Judy LaMarshIโm curious about things that people arenโt supposed to seeโso, for example, I liked going to the British Museum, but I would like it better if I could go into all the offices and storage rooms, I want to look in all the drawers andโdiscover stuff. And I want to know about people. I mean, I know itโs probably kind of rude but I want to know why you have all these boxes and whatโs in them and why all your windows are papered over and how long itโs been that way and how do you feel when you wash things and why donโt you do something about it?
Audrey Niffenegger...Dean Mohamet, a Muslim landowner from Patna who had followed his British patron to Ireland. There he soon eloped with, and later marries, Jean Daly, from a leading Anglo-Irish family.... In 1807 Dean Mohamet moved to London where he opened the country's first Indian owned curry restaurant, Dean Mohamet's Hindoostanee Coffee House :...He finally decamped to Brighton where he opened what can only be described as Britain's first oriental massage parlour and became "Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV. "
William DalrympleIt is fundamental to Socialism that we should liquidate the British Empire as soon as we can.
Stafford CrippsFerguson argued that British involvement in World War I was unnecessary, far too costly in lives and money for any advantage gained, and a Pyrrhic victory that in many ways contributed to the end of the Empire.
David HarsanyiBritish actors come at acting from a slightly different angle. Because a lot of the films are cast out there, they are so used to the angle from which the Americans, and certainly the young guys from LA, are coming at it, that I think it's interesting for them to find these English actors who maybe approach acting from a different place.
Jim SturgessWe have lost the good old British spirit. Instead we have American journalism and black-shirted buffoons making a cheap imitation of ice-cream sellers.
Oswald MosleyThe British secret service was staffed at one point almost entirely by alcoholic homosexuals working for the KGB
Clive JamesIn our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.
George OrwellIf you read the 'Daily Mail,' you would imagine that the British middle classes lead lives of unremitting misery.
Simon HoggartEconomics was like psychology, a pseudoscience trying to hide that fact with intense theoretical hyperelaboration. And gross domestic product was one of those unfortunate measurement concepts, like inches or the British thermal unit, that ought to have been retired long before.
Kim Stanley RobinsonThe British feel of blues has been hard, rather than emotional. Far too much emphasis on 12 bar, too little attention to words, far too little originality.
Alexis KornerBack in those days, all us skinny white British kids were trying to look cool and sound black. And there was Hendrix, the ultimate in black cool. Everything he did was natural and perfect.
Ronnie WoodIn recent years, perhaps encouraged by competition from McDonald's, the British hamburger has become a credit to the nation. At the time of which I speak, it looked like a scorched beer-coaster or a tenderized disc brake.
Clive JamesI find a difference in British spy fiction and American spy fiction. In the American version, it's more militaristic, partly because the CIA has more of the military makeup. Whereas MI6 is more of a cerebral, intelligence-based, relationship-based service, i.e., all they do is recruit people to get information out of them.
Charles CummingAs for the British churchman, he goes to church as he goes to the bathroom, with the minimum of fuss and no explanation if he can help it.
Ronald Blythe