British Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Bonn, I was a secret to my colleagues, and much of the time to myself.

Amusingly, it [astrology] falls foul of our modern taboo against lazy stereotyping. How would we react if a newspaper published a daily column that read something like this: Germans: It is in your nature to be hard-working and methodical, which should serve you well at work today. In your personal relationships, especially this evening, you will need to curb your natural tendency to obey orders. Chinese: Inscrutability has many advantages, but it may be your undoing today. British: Your stiff upper lip may serve you well in business dealings, but try to relax and let yourself go in your social life.

Richard Dawkins

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

On former British Prime Minister Tony Blair:

I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that.

If anyone asks me who was responsible for the British policy leading up to the war, I should, as a Labour man myself, make a confession and say: "All of us". We refused absolutely to face the facts. When the issue came of arming or rearming millions of people in this country... we refused to face the real issue at a critical moment. But what is the good of blaming anybody? We cannot make our action retrospective whatever we do. We have to start from now and try to do the best we can.

We made films at Ealing that were good, bad and indifferent, but that were indisputably British. They were rooted in the soil of the country.

I wonder if a single thought that has helped forward the human spirit has ever been conceived or written down in an enormous room: except, perhaps, in the reading room of the British Museum.

So I humbly accept the honor, keeping in mind the words of a British playwright, John Mortimer it was, "No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense and relatively clean fingernails." Well at best I've got one of the two of those.

Who shall call me ungentle, unfair,
I long'd so heartily then and there
To give him the grasp of fellowship;
But while I past he was humming an air,
Stopt, and then with a riding whip,
Leisurely tapping a glossy boot,
And curving a contumelious lip,
Gorgonised me from head to foot
With a stony British stare.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

There are in this world only two earthly paradises. The one is in Provence...The other is the Reading Room of the British Museum.

Ford Madox Ford

Attacks by poisoning are possibly even more common in Russia than assassinations by gunfire. Most famously, Alexander Litvinenko, a secret-police whistle-blower, was killed by polonium in London, in 2006. Last week, British newspapers reported that a Russian businessman who dropped dead while jogging in a London suburb in 2012 had been killed by a rare plant poison. He had been a key witness in a money-laundering case that had originally been exposed by the Moscow accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who was tortured to death, in 2009, in a Russian jail.

Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from the womb and the long gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off by the brain and purpose of man.

William Ewart Gladstone

I can stand here today, leader of the Labour Party, Prime Minister, and say to the British people: you have never had it so … prudent.

The British vote by a narrow majority to leave the European Union is not the end of the world — but it does show us how we can get there.

Thomas L. Friedman

We spent too much time in the first half of the nineties pondering whether we had to become less European so we could become more Asian, whether we had to become less British so we could become more multicultural. We had this perpetual seminar on our national identity, contributed to overwhelmingly by the cultural dietitians. I never thought Australians had any doubt as to what their identity was. And I think we've moved on from all of that.

That, by the accident of an illegality in the codicil to his will, it should have been possible for Hugh Lane's pet collection to be snaffled by the British Government, is a fitting conclusion to the shabby story of England's appreciation of French impressionist painting.

The quickest way to start a punch-up between two British literary critics is to ask them what they think of the poems of Sir John Betjeman

We're only making plans for Nigel
He has his future in a British steel
We're only making plans for Nigel
Nigel's whole future is as good as sealed

Sultan Aladdin... had few illusions about his own people: amiable, well-favoured, courteous, they loved rest better than industry,... their function was to remind the toiling Chinese, Indians and British of the ultimate vanity of labour.

Anthony Burgess

This is not our fight', the old man said. 'British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan... Look hard for your river Jordan, my child. You'll find it.

Laurie Halse Anderson

The British, Chinese, and United States Governments have given the Japanese people adequate warning of what is in store for them. We have laid down the general terms on which they can surrender. Our warning went unheeded; our terms were rejected. Since then the Japanese have seen what our atomic bomb can do. They can foresee what it will do in the future.

Harry S. Truman

When I look at young British Muslim women, I see myself.

All British people have plain names, and that works pretty well over there.

I found him in circumstances which indicated much depression, both physical and mental. He spoke with interest of Phrenology, and said that he had projected a Phrenological Journal, but knew that he would be stopped by the Government. He wished to shew the importance of the science in insanity, criminal legislation, education, and social arrangements; but in Naples there was no outlet for knowledge. Altogether, I have never had an interview with any phrenologist, foreign or British, who excited so strong a feeling of sympathy and regret, mingled with respect for his intellectual acquirements, as did Dr Ferrarese.