British Quotations

I'm for fighting a war on terrorism, not a war in Southwest Asia that Alexander the Great couldn't win, the British Empire couldn't win, the Soviet Union couldn't win. That's stupid. It's a waste of resources; a waste of America's best and brightest.

You are a member of the British royal family. We are never tired, and we all love hospitals.

It is not polite for a Russian to interfere in British politics.

The reason is that a military defeat of Britain will bring about the disintegration of the British Empire. This would not be of any benefit to Germany.

The Beatles' story is all of our stories. It is about how the youth culture emerged, the drug culture emerged, how politics rose to the fore as a universal debate. It's about rebellion, it's about the growth of the British entertainment system, the growth of the rock n' roll entertainment system.

The whole of government needs to contribute to the shared goal of restructuring the British economy. But that means taking on the myth that the Treasury either knows best or can run it all. It just doesn't.

In 1860 a total eclipse of the sun was visible in British America.

When the weather's good, there's no better place to be than the British countryside.

Since I first fell in love with choral music when I was 18 and began composing at 21, I've been listening to these recordings of British choirs. I just fell in love with that sound - that pure, clean, pristine sound - and I think it's probably been the biggest influence on my sound.

Alice Oswald. With Hughes and Heaney gone, people are looking around for the best British and Irish poets. Oswald is one of our finest.

'What if?' history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day - including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery - believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.

Both Iraq and Syria are a fissile mixture of ethnicities and religions thrown together after Versailles by departing French and British imperialists and only kept together by Baathist tyranny and violence.

My youngest brother and I went on a ten-day canoe trip in Bowron Provincial Park in British Columbia years ago. Believe it or not, we took only granola, thinking we'd be eating a lot of lake trout. Well, we neglected to bring along a net, and our fishing line was only 8-lb. test.

I don't care if Margot is a Dame of the British Empire or older than myself. For me she represents eternal youth; there is an absolute musical quality in her beautiful body and phrasing. Because we are sincere and gifted, an intense abstract love is born between us every time we dance together.

The strength of British theatre should be that these actors in their middle years know what they're doing and are good at it. Not rich, not famous, but making a living.

I descend from both Philadelphia Quakers and Carolina colonists whose families were separated by the Revolutionary War. That helped give me insight into the agony of Patriots who, until the British government denied their claims, had always, like Ben Franklin himself, thought of themselves as free-born Englishmen.

Teaching the history of the British Empire links in with that of the world: for better and for worse, the Empire made us what we are, forming our national identity. A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.

Be blind. Be stupid. Be British. Be careful.

I'd love to work in the States; I'd love to work anywhere where you get a good script and a good part to play. But I do love British film as well.

I acted in high school and studied at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford for one summer. I minored in theater, and I was always acting growing up and stuff, but really, I was just more interested in the comedy of it all. So for me, it's always comedy, and then acting is just one medium of comedy.

The Irish and British, they love satire, its a large part of the culture.

For fear of dropping the troops in the sea, the pilots tended to drop them too far inland - some of them actually in the British lines. The weapon containers often fell wide of the troops, which was another handicap that contributed to our excessive casualties.

Whenever I dream of playing a perfect round of golf, which I rarely do more than a dozen times a day, I picture myself on one of my favorite British Open-style links, and in particular the great courses of the west of Ireland, whose holes flow through naturally bunkered dunesland never far from the sight or sound of surf.

Other lands may have their charms, and the sunny skies of other climes may be regretted, but it is with pride and gladness that the wanderer sets foot again on British soil, thanking God for the religion and the liberty which have made this weather-beaten island in a northern sea to be the light and glory of the world.

In a few days an officer came to our camp, under a flag of truce, and informed Hamilton, then a captain of artillery, but afterwards the aid of General Washington, that Captain Hale had been arrested within the British lines condemned as a spy, and executed that morning.

I love British cursing - the cadence of it, the joy in the sound of the words, and the vulgarity of it.

A British declaration be taken against Martinez for 'capturing and robbing us.

I'm actually going in to ER as the new British intern.

Winston Churchill was not entirely British. His mother was American, making Sir Winston part Iroquois Indian.

The modern Middle East was largely created by the British. It was they who carried the Allied war effort in the region during World War I and who, at its close, principally fashioned its peace. It was a peace presaged by the nickname given the region by covetous British leaders in wartime: 'The Great Loot.'

I went to the Alabama public schools at a time when my English teachers, all but one of whom was a woman, taught nothing but the classics. They revered the great British and American writers.

I'm in kind of a strange position - I have a strong Australian career and a strong British career. Then there's the American career. For every movie I do here, I do two somewhere else. I bounce back and forth between the three places.

What's amazing is that I'm recognized all over the world through 'Red Dwarf.' British 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. It makes you feel like a rock star!

Thanks to the unprecedented reach of British navigation, London in the early 18th century was not just the emporium of the world, it was the first place in which it was possible to assemble artifacts from around the world and allow people to study them.

In a much larger sense, the problem of Sabah is directly influenced by the duplicity of imperial Britain. For whatever devious reason, the dismantling of the British empire created divisions and violence due to ethnic and religious differences.

A lot of British actors will look at America as such a land of opportunity. In England, there's such a small pool of working actors of color. There's such a small amount of work that is actually produced in the first place.

The British have slang words, as we do, but it was fun.

As a child, I had the opportunity to meet the captain onboard a British Airways flight. It was so exciting to see the cockpit and controls. I was in awe of the captain, and he stamped my log book, which I still have to this day.

The British needlewoman follows blindly where the merchant leads.

The British have always coped without becoming a dictatorship.

I would sooner play in a good British picture than in the majority of American pictures I have seen.

The British cinema had been very dull and conformist.

A few British suffragettes everybody laughed at started the cause of equality between men and women.

I've been on both sides: the victim and the villain. I was the victimised model, and everything from my weight to my fertility was held up for discussion. And then I was the person that could garner some kind of positive outcome, by taking on the role of vice chairman of the British Fashion Council and becoming an activist of body image.

It is our job to work for the government of the day and so that means working for Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, and we need to do those preparations just to be sure that we're ready for whoever you, the British public, elect and that's core to our civil service values over the last 150 years.

If I'm researching something strange and rococo, I'll go to the London Library or the British Library and look it up in books.

I've never felt British. I'm just not interested in national identity. I don't know why.

Most white Americans only discovered the blues with the British invasion.

In my opinion the greatest advantage we can at present expect from our Navy; for at this early period We can not expect to have a Navy to cope with the British.

I've been really lucky because I've managed to become wonderful friends with a handful of very talented British designers. Christopher Kane has become one of my very good friends - also Erdem. Jonathan Saunders is another brilliant talent who's very kind. We all hang out.

I'm a guy who loves my family, and we're probably only going to have a couple of more babies. I have the rest of my life to play the British Open.

I discovered that bone china was a British invention, which had been developed by a pottery sited next to a slaughterhouse - 'bone' china, of course, contains bones, though we are inclined to forget that.

British people might wonder 'What the hell is Kenneth Branagh doing directing 'Thor?' but the person asking that the most was Kenneth Branagh. I think he was more surprised than anyone else to find himself doing this kind of film.

We cannot, with good conscience, expect the British to set up an orderly schedule for the liberation of India before we have decided for ourselves to make all who live in America free.

Tony Blair is not just the worst prime minister we've ever had, but by far the worst prime minister we've ever had. It makes my blood boil to think of the British soldiers who've died for that little liar.

The International Brigades and the British volunteers were, numerically, only a small part of the Republican forces, but nearly all had accepted the need for organization and order in civilian life.

Civil servants are fully aware of the challenges the British economy faces. They are, after all, working tirelessly and professionally to support the coalition government through the current challenges, every day, and in every part of Britain.

I rely on my iPad for on-the-go entertainment. I stock it with TV shows, like 'Parks and Recreation' and the British version of 'The Office.' I'm reading a Charles Manson biography on it too, since I'm weirdly into true crime.

I give no more paroles to British officers.

You know, not even your British Queen is called just Elizabeth - she's Elizabeth the Second. There's only one Imelda.

There is a certain advantage to the British accent. I do notice that Americans love it; they think the we Brits are smarter than perhaps we are.

Look, half the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were either in debt or bankrupt. The remaining half, most of them lost all their possessions. The only reason Monticello didn't get burned to the ground was that the British patrol missed the road.

I wil not compare the education of an ancient Spartan with that of a British nobleman.

The BBC's television, radio and online services remain an important part of British culture and the fact the BBC continues to thrive amongst audiences at home and abroad is testament to a professional and dedicated management team who are committed to providing a quality public service.

If you look back at history, the various Maharajas of the Indian empire actually helped support a whole British industry. The royalty in those days ordered exotic cars in huge numbers.

The extraordinary exertions of the colonies, in cooperation with British measures, against the French, in the late war, were acknowledged by the British parliament to be more than adequate to their ability.

You just have to go to bat and take a swing. And if you're not right for a part, or it goes to a British man, they may remember that you showed up, knew your lines and were good. And maybe they'll call you in for something else.

The heritage of a British actor revolves around the challenges of playing the classic roles to meet certain levels of success as an actor. In America, the heritage of an actor is based on cinema mainly.

My own writing has perhaps more of an American flavor than a British one, but that's because the stories I've so far written have needed it. 'Empire State,' 'Seven Wonders' and 'The Age Atomic' are all very place-centric, where the setting itself is almost a character. But there is a universality to story that isn't just limited to science fiction.

Well, I'm British. I'm proud to be British and I love this country. I'm going nowhere.

If the truth be told, we are a society that is dripping in racism. This is not in the least surprising. For the best part of two centuries, we British ruled the waves, controlled two-fifths of the planet, and believed it was our responsibility to bring civilisation to those who allegedly lacked it.

I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.

There's a particularly British wariness of appearing to try too hard. It's somehow distasteful. Everything should come to us seamlessly and, if you have to work at it, you're somehow a loser.

Early economic theory was rooted in the Italian, French, and Spanish traditions, which were subjectivist oriented. Then it shifted onto the terrible path by Smith and Ricardo and the British classical tradition, which is 'objectivist' - values are in inherent in production.

I think probably the first time I wanted to be an artist was when I was about six or seven years old. I used to get British comics and I clearly remember seeing my first American comic: an issue of 'Action Comics', with Superman on the cover with a treasure horde in a cave, and Lois saying something like 'I don't believe Superman is a miser!'

I have an image of what a British gentleman looks like, and that image finds real expression in Prince Charles. He is beyond fashion - he is an archetype of style.

When I read that the British army had landed thirty-two thousand troops - and I had realized, not very long before, that Philadelphia only had thirty thousand people in it - it practically lifted me out of my chair." ()

I've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.

I love London, I love the British people.

Blair... is accusing us of executing British soldiers. We want to tell him that we have not executed anybody. They are either killed in battle, most of them get killed because they are cowards anyway, the rest they just get captured.

I was a good soldier in the British Army. I was born in a very, very poor family. And I enlisted to escape hunger. But my officers were Scottish and they loved me. The Scots are good, you know.

One of the first things a British visitor to Southern California discovers is that he must have a car. Freeways. Bad public transport. I took driving lessons.

It seems appropriate that the author of '1984' was a British citizen. George Orwell must have seen how easily the great British public's lamb-like disposition toward its leaders could be exploited to create a police state.

Charles Kiss is a legendary James Bond-style British spy. And McGrath is the young idealist who is given the task of following in his footsteps. It's a mission that forces McGrath to question everything he thought he believed in.

I guess something that I've noticed from American acts who had success in touring is more of an explanation as to their music. Which is I think quite funny. I think British acts might like to leave more to the imagination - maybe a bit more obscure perhaps - a bit more shy.

Let everyone leave all the guns - British guns and Irish guns - outside the door.

And I was asked if I would come and help with the recovery of this great British company, Cable and Wireless, and I'm delighted to become part of the new and very talented management that have been brought in to that company as well.

The first condition of success for the League of Nations is, therefore, a firm understanding between the British Empire and the United States of America and France and Italy that there will be no competitive building up of fleets or armies between them.

I really appreciate the British part of my family.

I don't feel the cold. It's my British blood!

The most satisfying accomplishment for me was winning the British Open in 1996. But the most rewarding times were the times on the mini tours.

'War and Peas' by Michael Foreman, one of the great British children's illustrators. His watercolours are so lovely you could almost eat them, just as members of the target audience have been trying to do for decades.

I like to mix British classics, like a great trench, with fun vintage pieces I find in New York. L.A. style is often very relaxed and comfortable, and I appreciate that effortless feel.

I've gotten more flack from the remake nature of our 'Being Human' from American audiences than I have from British fans. Every fan of the BBC original that I've bumped into seemed very excited and interested in seeing what we did with it - at least to my face!

I 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.

Whether you agree with me or disagree with me; like me or loathe me, don't bind my hands when I am negotiating on behalf of the British nation.

American audiences tend to be more expressive than British ones.

The United States can tell you all about what's wrong with the British, to say nothing of the Russians.

The British system denied any role for human creativity, and instead argued, that if man merely followed his hedonistic desires, pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, objective laws would naturally guide society to achieve the best allocation of wealth.

The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around 20,000 pounds. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child.