British Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Tzara: Causality is no longer fashionable owing to the war.
Carr: How illogical, since the war itself had causes. I forget what they were, but it was all in the papers at the time. Something about brave little Belgium, wasn't it?
Tzara: Was it? I thought it was Serbia...
Carr: Brave little Serbia...? No, I don't think so. The newspapers would never have risked calling the British public to arms without a proper regard for succinct alliteration.

I think of part of myself as a very passionate person, but I don't think that comes across. I don't know where it comes from, that reserve or veneer of British niceness. But it doesn't bother me if other people don't spot the passion. I know it's there.... As long as Blake [Edwards, her husband] knows.

The peacock in all his pride does not display half the colors that appear in the garments of a British lady when she is dressed.

Sinn Fein say, "The British government are buggers".

The Arab League was a British colonial creation to perpetuate despotic regimes in the context of the Cold War. The world has changed since then, and new Iraq could become a symbol of that change. Apart from a few thousand bureaucrats, nobody wants the Arab League.

This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks — men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war. This is a blueprint for US world domination — a New World Order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.

All the talk about the so-called unspeakable horror of early capitalism can be refuted by a single statistic: precisely in these years in which British capitalism developed, precisely in the age called the Industrial Revolution in England, in the years from 1760 to 1830, precisely in those years the population of England doubled.

Ludwig von Mises

We are still exchanging blows with the British government. They are using gay gangsters. Each time I pass through London, the gangster regime of Blair 'expresses its dismay'.

May the Great God, whom I worship, grant to my Country and for the benefit of Europe in general a great and glorious victory; and may no misconduct in anyone tarnish it; and may humanity after Victory be the predominant feature of the British fleet. For myself, individually, I commit my life to Him who made me, and may His blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my Country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen. Amen. Amen.

So, what do you think the British government did in the face of this open threat to public order? Go on, have a guess. That's right, they caved in like a bunch of spineless pussies! I couldn't have put it better myself.

J. J. Sylvester was an enthusiastic supporter of reform [in the teaching of geometry]. The difference in attitude on this question between the two foremost British mathematicians, J. J. Sylvester, the algebraist, and Arthur Cayley, the algebraist and geometer, was grotesque. Sylvester wished to bury Euclid "deeper than e'er plummet sounded" out of the schoolboy's reach; Cayley, an ardent admirer of Euclid, desired the retention of Simson's Euclid. When reminded that this treatise was a mixture of Euclid and Simson, Cayley suggested striking out Simson's additions and keeping strictly to the original treatise.

It can be said of him [Scott], when he departed he took a man's life along with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of time.

How important are the responsibilities, which now devolve upon me I fully realise, and it is my intention to prove by performance rather than by words. The inhertitance to which I succeed is no ordinary one, and I appreciate what Mysore owes to the administration of wise statesmen, and the care of British Government under the regency of my revered mother…. may heaven grant me the ability as well the ambition to make a full and wise use of the great opportunities of my position, and to govern, without fear or favour for the lasting happiness of my people.

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV

Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.

He seemed to realize she was staring at him, because the cursing stopped. "You cut me," he said. His voice was pleasant. British. Very ordinary. He looked at his hand with critcal interest. "It might be fatal." Tessa looked at him with wide eyes. "Are you the Magister?" He tilted his hand to the side. Blood ran down it, spattering the floor. "Dear me, massive blood loss. Death could be imminent.

Cassandra Clare

During the colonial epoch, the British forced Africans to sing,

I've been a Danish prince, a Texas slave-dealer, an Arab sheik, a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, and a Yankee navy lieutenant in my time, among other things, and none of 'em was as hard to sustain as my lifetime's impersonation of a British officer and gentleman.

George MacDonald Fraser

The British bourgeoisie
Is not born
And does not die,
But, if it is ill,
It has a frightened look in its eyes.

You have got to purge the army at the top. It will have to be a drastic purge, because the spirit of the British Army has to be regained. We have in this country five or six generals, members of other nations, Czechs, Poles, and French, all of them trained in the use of German weapons and German technique... I know it is hurtful to our pride, but would it not be possible to put some of these men temporarily in charge of our men in the field?

The great paradox of Australian history is that what started out as a colony populated by people whom Britain had thrown out proved to be so loyal to the British Empire for so long. America had begun as a combination of tobacco plantation and Puritan utopia, a creation of economic and religious liberty, and ended up as a rebel republic. Australia started out as a jail, the very negation of liberty. Yet the more reliable colonists turned out to be not the Pilgrims but the prisoners.

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell said that philosophy went downhill after Democritus and did not recover until the Renaissance.

Leon M. Lederman

British Workman (to German Comrade): My poor friend, I hear that under your fiscal system yon are reduced to eating black bread!
German Workman: My dear fellow, my heart bleeds for you. I hear that under your fiscal system you have to put up with white!

Unlike the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.

P. G. Wodehouse

We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States has been fashion'd from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only — which is a very great mistake.

Along with independence of India from the British Colonial rule|colonial rule, physical and mental development of masses is necessary for rebuilding the nation

Bidhan Chandra Roy