Britain Quotes

430 Sourced quotes

I would gladly say 'Heil Hitler!' and at once part company with him, realizing what a pitiable insult it is to such a great man to try to flatter him with such an imitation which he has always disdained. His way is for Germany, ours is for Britain; let us tread our paths with mutual respect, which is rarely increased by borrowing.

Everywhere you look — Britain, the States, western Europe — people are sealing themselves into crime-free enclaves. That's a mistake — a certain level of crime is part of the necessary roughage of life. Total security is a disease of deprivation.

In Britain the government has to come down in front of Parliament every day to explain its actions, but here the President never answers directly to Congress.

It is an interesting experience to become acquainted with a country through the eyes of the insane, and, if I may say, so a particularly useful grounding for life in Britain

The position of the United Kingdom is as usual so nuanced that it's difficult to see where they are on the spectrum, but look, that's what Britain's like and we all love being British.

Hail, happy Britain! highly favoured isle,
And Heaven's peculiar care!

William Somervile

Our war is not against everybody who is American or British, but against whoever stops us from fighting America and Britain, whether it is Pakistan or even our own people.

Mullah Dadullah

In December 1941, when Australians began to sense that they were plunged into a new environment, the spectacles they had carried out from Britain were obsolete. They needed spectacles that would correct short-sightedness. They had to see the environment they were in as clearly as the environment they had left across the world.

Geoffrey Blainey

An old Charlestonian may think of his city first and last, his heart bound to the palm-lined Battery, where echoes linger from the blasts of the guns his forebears trained on two meddling foreign powers—Great Britain and the United States.

William Francis Guess

Peace is the wish of the French of Italy Spain Germany and all the world, and Great Britain alone the cause of preventing its accomplishment, and this not for any point of honour or even interest, but merely lest there should be an example in the modern world of a great powerful Republic.

Charles James Fox

In the late 1930s, as Britain refused to adapt to the new realities of war, Winston Churchill observed, "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."

I am not one of those who decry Eton and Harrow. I was very glad of them in the Battle of Britain.

People in Scotland don't enjoy having decisions made for them in England any more than the English like having decisions made for them in Belgium. Nationalism in Britain cut both ways.

The full horror of what has happened in the United States earlier today is now becoming clearer. It is hard even to contemplate the utter carnage and terror which has engulfed so many innocent people. We've offered President Bush and the American people our solidarity, our profound sympathy, and our prayers. But it is plain that citizens of many countries round the world, including Britain, will have been caught up in this terror.

[Edward Heath], who sold out Britain's interests to the Common Market and gave our sovereignty away without our consent—with support of Mr Thorpe and the Liberals—is not entitled to wave the Union Jack to get himself out of the mess.

They sang of love, and not of fame;
Forgot was Britain's glory;
Each heart recalled a different name,
But all sang Annie Lawrie.

For a century and a half—from the middle of the fifth century to the end of the sixth—there had been... no formal communication between Rome and the Christians of Britain, nor had there been any between Rome and Ireland...

Human resource management (HRM) developed initially from work in the United States of America in the 1960s and 1970s and since the mid 1980s has been an ever more visible feature of the academic literature, of consultancy services and of organisational terminology; particularly in the USA and Great Britain.

It has sometimes been argued that in gaining Canada in the Seven Years War, Britain had undermined her position in America. Without the French threat, why should the thirteen colonies stay loyal? Yet the loss of America had the unforeseen effect of securing Canada for the Empire, thanks to the flood of English-speaking Loyalists who, together with new British settlers, would eventually reduce the French Quebecois to a beleaguered minority. The amazing thing is that so many people should have voted with their feet against American independence, choosing loyalty to King and Empire over 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.

From Britain's point of view the 1939 war had been a liberal war which had been entered into in a condition of moral indignation without the resources to fight it, that it had been providential good fortune which had placed the burden of fighting on the Russians and the Americans.

Maurice Cowling

It is crystal clear to me that if Arabs put down a draft resolution blaming Israel for the recent earthquake in Iran it would probably have a majority, the US would veto it and Britain and France would abstain.

The duty on British teas was slight. Americans might have paid the duty without increasing the price of their much prized luxury; ministers might have collected the same duty in England to the advantage of the Exchequer. That Britain should have insisted on this peppercorn in acknowledgement of her right, that America should have refused it in vindication of her liberty, may be taken as a high tribute from two eminently practical peoples to the power of abstract ideas.

In Britain, journalists often view comparisons with our society going back two, three, or seven centuries as more relevant than comparisons going back two, three, or seven decades. Drunkenness centuries ago is more illuminating than comparative sobriety 30 years ago. The distant past, selectively mined for evidence that justifies our current conduct, becomes more important than living memory.

Anthony Daniels

We are taunted—by the French, by the Italians, by the Spaniards—for refusing to worship at the shrine of a common government superimposed upon them all... where were the European unity merchants in 1940? I will tell you. They were either writhing under a hideous oppression or they were aiding and abetting that oppression. Lucky for Europe that Britain was alone in 1940.

Of the popularity of Mrs thatcher:

The further you got from Britain, the more admired you found she was.

James Callaghan