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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 shot for French and British Vogue. The British Vogue one featured clothes by Chloe and was shot at Highgate and the John Soane Museum. It came out much better in my opinion. I only did one day and was working with my own make-up and hair people and a model who I've known for years.
Nan GoldinArmed 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 AdamsLondon exists normally in a state of bleach bypass. There's the artistic context of "Blow Up" and "Performance" and all the Sixties and Seventies British films that I grew up on, because I did very much grow up on British films.
William MonahanClass has always been a staple of British comedy. We've always been able to laugh at it. When British shows are translated to America, the absence of the equivalent class structure there often causes them to fail. But over here we've always got comic mileage out of it.
Dick ClementWhen I was 13, listening to Choice FM, I would listen to a lot of R&B from America, and whenever a British person tried to do it, it didn't really work, they just sounded like they were trying to copy that whole style. Now the music sounds British, something real rather than an imitation.
Katy BThe 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 MackenzieLand Grant College Act is the jewel of Republican reform. It had not occurred to any other country to educate their farmers and workers. When the British studied the reasons for American success in 1851, the consensus was that Americans workers were well educated. So they didn't oppose progress the way British workers did.
Charles R. MorrisOne would have thought that if there was one cause in the world which the Conservative party would have hastened to defend, it would be the cause of the British Empire in India ... Our fight is hard. It will also be long ... But win or lose, we must do our duty. If the British people are to lose their Indian Empire, they shall do so with their eyes open.
Winston ChurchillWhat if all those strange and unexplainable bends in history were the result of supernatural interference? At which point I asked myself, what's the weirdest most eccentric historical phenomenon of them all? Answer:the Great British Empire. Clearly, one tiny little island could only conquer half the known world with supernatural aid. Those absurd Victorian manners and ridiculous fashions were obviously dictated by vampires. And, without a doubt, the British army regimental system functions on werewolf pack dynamics.
Gail CarrigerI must fight unto the death the unholy attempt to impose British methods and British institutions on India.
Mahatma GandhiThe British had an even stronger [then America] business interest in Nazi Germany. And Benito Mussolini was greatly admired.
Noam ChomskyMy 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 HavensThrough its imperialist system Britain brought about untold suffering of millions of people. And this is an historical fact. To be able to admit this would increase the respect, you know, which we have for British institutions.
Nelson MandelaWhen you cut it up, put the pieces in your mouth and swallowed them, the British hamburger shaped itself to the bottom on your stomach like ballast, while interacting with your gastric juices to form an incipient belch of enormous potential, an airship which had been inflated in a garage. This belch, when silently released, would cause people standing twenty yards away to start examining the soles of their shoes. The vocalized version sounded like a bag of tools thrown into a bog.
Clive JamesRed Bull are backing a spinal-injury research charity called Wings For Life, which I am an ambassador for, with a programme called Faces for Charity that will run at this year's British Grand Prix.
Mark WebberEverything 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 MyersI 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 JeffersonActually, I'm frequently described as the UK's only translator of Korean literature, but even that isn't accurate - Agnita Tennant is UK-based, Janet Poole is British though lives in Toronto, Brother Anthony was born here though is now a naturalised Korean citizen. There's also Chi-young Kim and Sora Kim-Russell, who are younger and do fiction for commercial houses.
Deborah SmithBlack Americans are the only people in history who are for education instead of liberation. George Washington wasn't beating up on British for the right to open a college! The line isn't "Give me education or give me death."
Dick GregoryThe Monarchy...is the secret well from which the flourishing institution of British Snobbery draws its nourishment
Kingsley MartinBecause half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray, to not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.
Edmund BurkeIt was part of war; men died, more would die, that was past, and what mattered now was the business in hand; those who lived would get on with it. Whatever sorrow was felt, there was no point in talking or brooding about it, much less in making, for form's sake, a parade of it. Better and healthier to forget it, and look to tomorrow.The celebrated British stiff upper lip, the resolve to conceal emotion which is not only embarrassing and useless, but harmful, is just plain commons sense
George MacDonaldIt is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.
Thomas BeechamWhat 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 GayRugby is a game for the mentally deficient... That is why it was invented by the British. Who else but an Englishman could invent an oval ball?
Peter PookI've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.
Paddy AshdownWhen 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 PilgerThe British model, which I've always thought was great, is that you do a TV show and then they sell it. Then you can buy it at the video stores forever, so it never went away. But American TV used to be if you had a show and it got cancelled, then it never existed. It was just this thing you heard about and you couldn't see it again. There is something so great about shows getting released and people getting to watch them over and over again. It definitely takes the sting out of it.
Paul FeigThe British Labour Party has always had a very strong "Atlanticist component," with an obsequiousness to American policies, and Blair represents this wing. He's clearly obsessed with Iraq. He has to be because the overwhelming majority of the people of Britain oppose a military action. I've never known a situation like it.
John PilgerThat I want to destroy British imperialism is another matter, but I want to do so by converting those who are associated with it.
Mahatma GandhiI live in London and I am a British subject, although I do write in Spanish, of course
Guillermo Cabrera InfanteI turned down the OBE because its not a club you want to join when you look at the villains whove got it. Its all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.
Ken LoachAn excellent introduction to the rise and fall of the British Raj, accurate, succinct, and engaging.
Stanley WolpertThe habit of a midwinter festivity had come by the dawn of history (and probably very long before) to seem a natural one to the British, and not one to be eradicated by changes of political or religious fashion. ... It was general custom in pagan Europe to decorate spaces with greenery and flowers for festivals, attested wherever records have survived.
Ronald HuttonWhen I'm lying drunk at an airport the press call me Irish... but when I win an Oscar, I'm classified as British.
Brenda FrickerThere is an honourable tradition in British public life that those charged with authority at the top of an organisation should accept responsibility for what happens in that organisation. I am therefore writing to the prime minister today to tender my resignation as chairman of the BBC.
Gavyn DaviesThe British press isn't as vicious as it used to be, and these days it's sort of cool to care again. Everyone loves an everyman anthem.
Guy GarveyI thought, If people are going to write about what I'm wearing, then I would wear young British designers who need the publicity.
Emma WatsonI said that Mrs Obama has been extremely supportive of American designers, but clearly we were disappointed that she chose to wear a British designer for the state dinner...From there, I was so embarrassed that I am definitely going to write to her. She has been super supportive to American designers.
Diane von FurstenbergHe seemed to realize she was staring at him, because the cursing stopped. "You cut me," he said. His voice was pleasant. British. Very ordinary. He looked at his hand with critcal interest. "It might be fatal." Tessa looked at him with wide eyes. "Are you the Magister?" He tilted his hand to the side. Blood ran down it, spattering the floor. "Dear me, massive blood loss. Death could be imminent.
Cassandra ClareThe Death Star is just full of British actors opening doors and going,Oh... I... oh... What is it Lieutenant Sebastian? It's just the Rebels, sir... they're here. My God, man! Do they want tea? No, I think they're after something a bit more than that, sir. I don't know what it is, but they've brought a flag. Damn, that's dash cunning of them.
Eddie IzzardPeople say there's no trace of an accent anymore, and there isn't because I worked very hard to lose it. And the reason I did that is a British accent in America is a real status symbol.
John MahoneyBut, you know, the Stones were my opening act in the Sixties. I loved those British guys, the way they just stood there and shook their hair.
Ronnie Spector