British Quotations | Page 4

Sickert was a creep. But for some reason, so are all the best British modern painters.

'Sir' Richard Branson may be the Julian Assange of British business, in that both believe the world revolves around them. Hence Branson's decision to set up an air service between Manchester and London, above the route of the train line that's been taken from him.

Sinn Fein's position on policing is very clear-cut -- when the British government delivers on the commitments it has made, I will deliver on the commitments I have made.

Most of the television I've done over the years has been aimed at British and American audiences. This time, while the target is still Britain and America, the excitement is that there are also six billion inhabitants of the globe.

My first book was the most successful debut novel in the U.K. ever and every one of my books has reached number one in the U.K. Clearly the British know brilliance when they see it.

Nelson was a great hero. In the whole span of British history he still stands as one of the greatest. The legend reminds us of the great value of heroic leadership when a nation falls under fire and stress,

One of the best things about the award season is that when a British film succeeds at the Oscars and BAFTAs, such as 'Slumdog Millionaire' in 2009 and 'The King's Speech' this year, the British public get right behind it with an immense sense of national pride.

Of course the decision to commit British forces in Iraq was, for many MPs, a wrenching choice. However, our responsibility in the face of a growing ISIS threat is not to be paralysed by history, but to learn the correct lessons from it.

Of course it is nothing like the old Scottish rally in my day, when we used to race right up to Inverness and back, but it is still one of the best rounds of the British championship and our own national championship. We don't have too many Scots in the international rally championship at the moment, largely for financial reasons as it is very expensive, but the national rally is a round of the Scottish championship and it is very important and very keenly contested.

None of this was ever put before parliament or the British people in March 2003 when military action commenced.

No one could accuse the British law lords, in their black robes and starched wigs, of being part of an international socialist conspiracy.

My dad's family is part British and Austrian, and my mother's family is from Goa, which is in the south of India. I looked different from everyone else, which now is such a blessing. It was harder at the beginning of my career.

Murray will be the top British player for many years,

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.

More than 13,000 Malaysians travel to the U.K. to study in British universities every year.

My glasses are from Cutler & Gross. They're not prescription: I just love wearing them. I used to wear Ray-Ban a lot and then I realised that a lot of the things I've started going for are a little bit more refined. I liked the fact that I was supporting a British brand, somebody I could have a relationship with and people that I could talk to.

My grandmother on my father's side, a nightclub singer, was a Jewish refugee from Prussia who ended up in Jerusalem, where she met my grandfather - a British army officer. I remember as a child having bowls of chicken soup made by her. There were lots of interesting components, like feet and necks.

My father had risen in the British Army under the revolutionary aegis of General Montgomery, who was mad about training for battle, not muddling into disaster.

My father's a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.

Obviously, it is a matter of grave concern that a British citizen has been killed,

no excuse to break the law and show such flagrant contempt for the courts of British Columbia.

On many levels, the British presence is more sustainable. It is safer in the Shiite south, and casualties are low.

I was greatly saddened to hear of the death of a British soldier on duty in Iraq. As always, my thoughts are with the family and the families of those injured in this appalling act of violence.

I was shocked by the amount of Welsh people in L.A. We'd go to this British pub to watch the 'Six Nations' early in the morning and I remember the first time I walked in it was just a sea of red.

I would be very surprised if it was true. I was with British Environment Minister Margaret Beckett just a few days ago and she said that the prime minister had been misunderstood,

If we get any further signs of strike action hitting British Airways or Gate Gourmet going (into administration) the BA stock price could go below 280p, especially with the oil price as high as it is.

If they don't vote for her, I hope somebody will have the decency to tell them to go stuff it, ... If they won't support a young woman from British Columbia to be prime minister of Canada, I hope they stop talking about western alienation.

I have every reason to believe that the British are right about this. I trust the British on this issue. The British are operating in the south, they know the situation there.

I did play a practice round with (Nicklaus) at the British Open and I played really, really well that day, which is useful to that point.

I did not say that the British troops will pull out because I am not the commander-in-chief of the British military,

I'd love to open a restaurant that changes every month. One month it would be a mom and bar spaghetti-and-meatball, Red Sox place, and the next it would be a British pub, and everyone gets in a fight.

I'd like to offer my plea to the people of America, not the government of America, a plea for my release from captivity and also a plea for a release from captivity of all the people of Iraq who are also suffering the same fate. And that is the occupation of the American troops and the British troops which has brought me to this condition and has brought the Iraqi people to the condition they're in.

I don't know where Blair got his numbers, but the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) where I talked this morning had a sell-out audience and they turned away as many people as were in the audience who wanted to hear about Internet commerce, ... That doesn't sound like an apathetic audience.

I don't believe anybody can be protected with high confidence from car bombs in urban areas. The Israelis and the British have worked as hard on this problem for years as anybody can. They have not provided an adequate protection for their population against car bombs in urban areas. That's -- that is a very, very difficult threat.

ID can be hijacked, and cards can be faked. All of the 9/11 terrorists had fake IDs, yet they still got on the planes. If the British national ID card can't be faked, it will be the first on the planet.

I am grateful in a way that can never be adequately expressed in words. To the British soldiers who risked their lives to rescue us, to the government of Canada who sent a team to Baghdad to help secure our release, to all those who thought about us and prayed for us, for all those who spoke for us when we had no voice, I am forever and truly grateful. It's great to be alive.

I am in the habit, like most British people, of holding the door open for people. But in the U.S., people don't understand it. You get odd looks or doors slammed in your face.

I am truly honored and speechless which is a first! I'm absolutely delighted, and the fact that this is a public vote makes it extra special. It has been a very tough few years and the British public have been so supportive of me and the family, and seen that I am a real, old-fashioned British girl at heart.

I am totally in favour of reform - but it must be reform that changes the nature of British politics, not simply the makeup or operation of parliament.

I am so pleased to have such a key British cultural player to work with our team,

Ian Rankin's Rebus is the king of modern British crime fiction. He is dour, determined, and constantly falls foul of his seniors. For all this, we root for him. He is eminently loveable, a quixotic hero moving through the darker half of a Jekyll and Hyde Edinburgh.

But the same issues are still lingering, particularly the constraints on capital for companies such as British Telecommunications; but we're fans of Vodafone, which has a stronger balance sheet, has doubled its size over two years and is debt free.

Bunthorne's a high baritone, which is what I am. And I already come with the British accent, so that won't be a problem. You know, the designers came over and showed me the costumes. And they're wonderful--outrageous, campy, over-the-top. So maybe that's the new market I'm going to be cornering: campy, over-the-top characters who have a nasty side. Hmmm. What are they trying to tell me?

But a careful study of his background and contacts reveal a number of clues to his extremism which the British intelligence apparently missed.

I lost many friends, American and Korean. The British and Turkish are the ones I can think of right away. And it's a very compelling moment. It brings back many memories,

I had attacked the British poets' nervous preference for gentility above all else.

I have met him (the British hostage) and told him not to worry as he will be released.

I have listened and I have learned, ... And I think I have a very clear idea of what the British people now expect from this government for a third term.

I happen to consider myself a Highlander even before a Scot; I am proud to be British yet feel comfortable as a European citizen.

If I'm in a gathering of filmmakers, I'm first and foremost a British Indian; if I'm in a gathering of British Indians, I'm a woman director. There are so many sides to who I am that I change all the time.

I felt a certain responsibility to help the British, as I had urged the British to abandon their export trade and convert to war production.

If British troops are committed to action, then the nation will, of course, support them. Their courage and skill is not in doubt.

I did a TV series for the British History Channel a few years ago and for a few weeks afterwards I was accosted by folk in Britain wanting to talk, which was flattering, but the memory faded and blessed anonymity returned.

Given that her mother lived to 101, the Queen is clearly in for the long haul. Therefore the Prince of Wales must simply wait. We can only wish his mother all health and happiness and get used to the fact that British heads of state will, in future, be very senior citizens.

From the 1920s into the 1940s, Britain's standard of living was supported by oil from Iran. British cars, trucks, and buses ran on cheap Iranian oil. Factories throughout Britain were fueled by oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which projected British power all over the world, powered its ships with Iranian oil.

If Bill Clinton was the British prime minister, we wouldn't be in the fix we're in,

If a British player isn't going to win, many of us always wanted it to be Jack Nicklaus. Apart from the fact that he was a great player, he is a gentleman and always gracious, even in defeat. He's treated like a Scot, which is a strange thing for an American. Quite a tribute.

If a big French bank and a big British tank were talking of a merger, there would be scope for things to go awry if it's not clear who is running it.

If the British Isles had an official vegetable, it would have to be the potato.

If the British controlled West Point, then they controlled the Hudson,

He was concerned about how the British accents would translate, and sometimes we rerecorded lines to make things clearer,

He was born here, ... He didn't do anything other than British culture.

I always say Los Angeles is the place where British people come to exceed their worth. It's quite true of everything: The British accent does open doors.

He was this amazing combination of human strength and human frailty. He was one of British history's really interesting characters.

He has had a lot of problems over the years. We are all rooting for him and hope he pulls through. Everyone has their own opinion about football and their favorite players but in terms of British players, you would find it difficult to think of anyone better.

He got an automatic rifle and pointed it straight at him, and he chastised him about how the British treated people. I thought John was going to die.

He mixed the British music hall tradition with an American taste for jazz, sex and money.

What may have saved him from the fate of many activists - death or jail - may have been the British Council.

There is a hardcore rump within the British Muslim community that didn't actually believe somehow that Sidique and his cohorts were responsible. Rampant conspiracy theories mushroomed out of control.

The people of the coast -- and all British Columbians -- can take pride in these achievements, ... They have reached a hard-won consensus aimed at saving areas of global significance.

We told the British that there are some communications taking place between some terrorists in Saudi Arabia and some other parties in the UK,

What we've learned from the British experience is that if people are admonished to notify authorities of suspicious activity or abandoned parcels, if you then readily have communications systems for them to do that -- telephones that are marked -- and you provide rapid response when reports are made, then in effect you have closed the loop.

have the adverse effect of damaging the quality of British soccer.

His name is John Mason, a British national incarcerated in The Rock in 1962.

History will certainly judge Tony Blair on Iraq, but first the British people will judge him on Thursday, ... Blair's judgment on the Iraq war was fatally flawed.

There is a need to get the British government, in particular, to renovate the assembly, which is part of the 'Good Friday' agreement, and which has never met since the elections two years ago.

We make television for a British audience and it's still amazing to me that most countries in the world have my fat face beamed into homes once a week.

He (Spielberg) has great affection and respect for the British film industry and the British people. He has always enjoyed every moment he's spent in the UK -- or anywhere where the British flag flies.

I already had one of the best jobs in British policing, so it was always going to have to be something really outstanding to tempt me away.

I actually think it's what he represents they don't want to see depicted, because in that square one Nelson signifies the birth of the British empire and 100 years of global dominance, ... Nelson Mandela would signify the peaceful transition to a multiracial and multicultural world, and I would be proud to have that in London.

I also want to put on record the very high regard which the British government as a whole, and I personally, have for Kofi Annan, in leading and steering the United Nations through a period of great change in international relations,

Haroon is already a Four Nation and British champion and he thinks he's going to be better than me. We spar a lot and sometimes, even though he weighs only 6½ stone, he can hurt me. I give him one back then - just to let him know who's boss.

There are still thousands of people dying every year in Laos, mostly children and farmers, from unexploded anti-personnel ordnance that the U.S. simply saturated much of the land with, especially in the Plain of Jars. There actually is a British engineering team trying to remove some of these things, which are much worse than land mines.

I was lucky that one of my first movies, 'One Million Years B.C.' was made in Europe by a British company. The Brits, and a lot of the rest of Europe, seemed to really love exotic women. The fact that I was American and exotic just made me more appealing to them.

Kevin would have to wait at least six months to get a British title shot but if he beats Okine it will fast-track him to a British title shot sooner and jump him up to 15th place in the world title ratings.

I would not want anyone killed on my behalf whether it is someone that was holding me or most certainly not a British soldier. I don't want anybody else to pay with their life for mine.

I would want the British reader to feel that religion in America isn't an absurd thing - a sign of a pin head athwart a gigantic body.

I think I proved myself today, and I think the British Open is done, so I don't want to hear any more questions about it.

I think it's an ominous sign. Whenever there's an attack of this scale going on in London -- it's not just a British thing, it's a U.S. thing too, because most of the time when al Qaeda strikes, it tends to strike in multiple, simultaneous attacks.

It hurts me not to have them. We can't pretend it doesn't matter. It's like a British Invasion set without the Beatles.

I think the British people are very, very attached to the idea that the health service is free at the point of use. But there is no reason why every doctor, nurse and teacher in this country has to be employed by the state.

I think the Dutch certainly get British comedy. And let's face it; a lot of it is pretty low-hanging fruit for the whole world now. There are probably tribes in the heart of the Papua New Guinean rainforest that know all the words to the Dead Parrot sketch.

I think the atmosphere is nowhere near what it was in 2000 because I had won the U.S. Open by 15 and the British Open by eight, so 23 shots in two tournaments is pretty good. This year I've won two major championships. The Masters was a little bit closer, but I won the British by five. The atmosphere is also a little different because I've done this before. I guess from some of the media I talked to the novelty factor is not there anymore; I've already done it.

It is clear that if British lawyers resident in the U.K. cannot join the California Bar, they are more likely to direct clients to parts of the U.S. with which they are familiar -- that is, where they have been admitted to practice (e.g., New York, Virginia, Washington state or Oregon),

I think we need to fix some things within the staff and the athletes, ... I think we should take a lesson from the French and the British who have basically gotten the stick around and got it around safely. That's all we need to do. That's all we had to do: get the stick around safely and we'd be in the finals. There's no way that we should not have been in the finals.

I think we have made a British degree affordable.

I think we would be hard pressed to tell our own people why we are doing this with India when even the British won't do it or the Australians won't do it and the Canadians won't do it. We need to have those other flags flying on these joint enterprises.

I think Amir Khan - if he does what is expected of him - will be the biggest ever of any British fighter.

I think we can look for a strong consumer from pretty much Newfoundland to British Columbia.

It is of deep concern that British soldiers held by the police should end up being held by militia,