British Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there." Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

John F. Kennedy

They tell me that So-and-So, who does not write prefaces, is no charlatan. Well, I am. I first caught the ear of the British public on a cart in Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass bands,and this... because... I am a natural-born mountebank.

George Bernard Shaw

More than 80 per cent of the British casualties of the Great War were English. More than 80 per cent of the taxation is paid by the English taxpayers. We are entitled to mention these facts, and to draw authority and courage from them.

Winston Churchill

These two great organisations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some affairs for mutual and general advantage. I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands, and better days.

Winston Churchill

Gordon and his friends had quite an exciting time with their 'subversive ideas'. For a whole year they ran an unofficial monthly paper called the Bolshevik, duplicated with jellygraph. It advocated Socialism, free love, the dismemberment of the British Empire, the abolition of the Army and Navy, and so on and so forth. It was great fun. Every intelligent boy of sixteen is a Socialist. At that age one does not see the hook sticking out of the rather stodgy bait.

From Carlyle onwards, but especially in the last generation, the British intelligentsia have tended to take their ideas from Europe and have been infected by habits of thought that derive ultimately from Machiavelli. All the cults that have been fashionable in the last dozen years, Communism, Fascism, and pacifism, are in the last analysis forms of power worship.

I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British instead of the other way around, I might have gotten here on my own.

Winston Churchill

There is as much need for a change of heart among the Hindus and Mussalmans as there is among the British, before a proper settlement is arrived at.

Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt.

As a red hot Communist I am in favour of fascism. The only drawback to Sir Oswald's movement is that it is not quite British enough.

George Bernard Shaw

Child Rowland to the dark tower came, His word was still, Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man.

William Shakespeare

The builders of the British Indian Empire have patiently built its four pillars-the European interests, the army, the Indian princes and the communal divisions.

'I propose that 100,000 degenerate Britons should be forcibly sterilized and others put in labour camps to halt the decline of the British race.'

Winston Churchill

No theory of government was ever given a fairer test or a more prolonged experiment in a democratic country than democratic socialism received in Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every respect. Far from reversing the slow relative decline of Britain vis-à-vis its main industrial competitors, it accelerated it. We fell further behind them, until by 1979 we were widely dismissed as 'the sick man of Europe'... To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.

Margaret Thatcher

We mean to hold our own. I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

Winston Churchill

You and I both know that there can be no real solution of the Indian problem which does not also benefit Britain. Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does. It is so obvious, is it not, that the British worker as well as the Indian peasant stands to gain by the ending of capitalist exploitation, and that Indian independence is a lost cause if the Fascist nations are allowed to dominate the world.

There is in the British Museum an enormous mind. Consider that Plato is there cheek by jowl with Aristotle; and Shakespeare with Marlowe. This great mind is hoarded beyond the power of any single mind to possess it.

The British are apt to make merits of their stupidities, and to represent their various incapacities as points of good breeding.

George Bernard Shaw

By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys.... I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence—which is a noble thing.... Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat.

Winston Churchill

Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organisation will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States

Winston Churchill

Child Roland to the dark tower came,
His word was still, Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man.

William Shakespeare

Frightfulness is not a remedy known to the British Pharmacopaeia.

Winston Churchill

I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

Benjamin Franklin

You see, it's essential that one of us stays awake during the flight [ballon]. So, rather than using the comfortable Virgin seats which we used to cross the Atlantic, we've asked British Airways for two of theirs.

Richard Branson

A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the State as servant and not as master: these are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.

Margaret Thatcher