George Mikes Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

When people say England, they sometimes mean Great Britain, sometimes the United Kingdom, sometimes the British Isles, - but never England.

George Mikes
On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners.

George Mikes
Many Continentals think life is a game; the English think cricket is a game.

George Mikes
The world still consists of two clearly divided groups: the English and the foreigners. One group consists of less than 50 million people; the other of 3,950 million. The latter group does not really count.

George Mikes
An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.

George Mikes
In England only uneducated people show off their knowledge; nobody quotes Latin or Greek authors in the course of conversation, unless he has never read them.

George Mikes
As a motto, I shall keep to Francis Bacon's advice: "Praise yourself daringly, something always sticks."

George Mikes
Travel' is the name of a modern disease which became rampant in themid-fifties and is still spreading. The disease - its scientific name is travelitis furiosus - is carried by a germ called prosperity.

George Mikes
English humor resembles the Loch Ness Monster in that both are famous but there is a strong suspicion that neither exists. Here the similarity ends: the Loch Ness Monster seems to be a gentle beast and harms no one; English humour is cruel.

George Mikes
A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him.

George Mikes
Going to bed with women is almost a national hobby with Brazilians; it is rather like cricket in England.

George Mikes
'I don't say a Zionist must be insane,' said President Weizmann, 'but it helps if he is.'

George Mikes
The English take everything with an exquisite sense of humour. They are only offended if you tell them that they have no sense of humour.

George Mikes
In England the boy pats his adored one on the back and says softly, "I don't object, you know." If he is quite mad with passion, he may add: "I rather fancy you, in fact.

George Mikes
Whatever else an Italian may lack, he has an Ego. Sometimes two. It is nice to think that even the poorest Italian may possess two Egos while even the richest Englishman, as a rule, has none.

George Mikes
In England it is bad manners to be clever, to assert something confidently. It may be your own personal view that two and two make four, but you must not state it in a self-assured way, because this is a democratic country and others may be of a different opinion.

George Mikes
On the Continent there is one topic which should be avoided-the weather; in England, if you do not repeat the phrase "Lovely day, isn't it?" at least two hundred times a day, you are considered a bit dull.

George Mikes
Television is of great educational value. It teaches you while still young how to (a) kill, (b) rob, (c) embezzle, (d) shoot, (e) poison, and, generally speaking, (f) how to grow up into a Wild West outlaw or gangster by the time you leave school.

George Mikes
Bargaining is a repulsive habit; compromise is one of the highest human virtues - the difference between the two being that the first is practised on the Continent, the latter in Great Britain.

George Mikes
An average English motorcar could be placed, I believe, without much difficulty, in the luggage-rack of an average American automobile.

George Mikes
I said in my earlier book, and find no reason for retracting my statement, that the famous Jewish sense of humour got lost in transit to Israel.

George Mikes
If it is gay, ribald and lascivious night-life you are after, Israel is not the place for you. The night clubs you do find are nearer in spirit to a YMCA than to dens of iniquity.

George Mikes
Japan suffered terribly from the atomic bomb but never adopted a pose of moral superiority, implying: 'We would never have done it!' The Japanese know perfectly well they would have used it had they had it. They accept the idea that war is war; they give no quarter and accept none. Total war, they recognize, knows no Queensberry Rules. If you develop a devastating new weapon during a total war, you use it; you do not put it into the War Museum.

George Mikes
Israelis keep teaching you your own business. God knows everything but the Israelis know everything better.

George Mikes
Tel-Aviv airport is still the only airport in the world where each passenger is met by ten relatives.

George Mikes