Peter Ustinov Quotes

63 Sourced Quotes

And here is the lesson I learned in the army. If you want to do a thing badly, you have to work at it as though you want to do it well.

Peter Ustinov
All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses - fix your bayonets boys - gentlemen, synchronize your watches - in ten seconds time the barrage starts,... a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years.

Peter Ustinov
This is a free country, madam. We have a right to share your privacy in a public place.

Peter Ustinov
By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.

Peter Ustinov
The young need old men. They need men who are not ashamed of age, not pathetic imitations of themselves.... Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.

Peter Ustinov
To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.

Peter Ustinov
I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins.

Peter Ustinov
A diplomat these days is nothing but a head-waiter who's allowed to sit down occasionally.

Peter Ustinov
Life was cheap in the Middle Ages. It has become cheaper since. It is only in specific battles for specific lives that our culture is put to the test, and with it our humanity.

Peter Ustinov
I'd rather be buried at sea than on the shore when I come to die. Will you stand by the plank, mates, so I can shake a friendly hand before I sink?

Peter Ustinov
Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.

Peter Ustinov
I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know what a sad place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.

Peter Ustinov
Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.

Peter Ustinov
Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.

Peter Ustinov
I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilized music in the world.

Peter Ustinov
Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.

Peter Ustinov
It is unfortunate for all that no moral issue has ever been clearer. Any attempt to plea-bargain with outlaws and renegades will only be at the expense of honor, decency and self-respect. The Serbs, are two-dimensional people with a craving for simplicity and an ideology so basic it can be understood without effort. They need enemies, not friends, to focus their two-dimensional ideas. Life for them is a simple tune, never an orchestration, or even a pleasant harmony. Animals make use of their resources with far greater felicity than these retorted creatures, whose subscription to the human race is well in arrears.

Peter Ustinov
I'm Rally of Unionist Separist Extremes, sometimes known as the R.U.S.E. … It's the party at present in power.

Peter Ustinov
I hate being moved. I hate that man who came in. So self-righteous, so cruel. He made fun of me, that's why I cried. You never did that. You led me into temptation by your — politeness.

Peter Ustinov
It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.

Peter Ustinov
Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

Peter Ustinov
Lieutenant Seymour: Wyatt, we do not deal with justice here, but with the law.
Lieutenant Wyatt: Was not the one conceived to serve the other?

Peter Ustinov
Basically I'm a very serious person, but I think the form it takes with me is comedy. I see the amusing side of all potentially pompous situations.

Peter Ustinov
If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.

Peter Ustinov
I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.

Peter Ustinov
If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.

Peter Ustinov
Flogging. The only solution to every problem. I warrant even the culprit himself doesn't know! It was just — his turn!

Peter Ustinov
It's hot. And there's a lot of it. I like everything about it except the flavor.

Peter Ustinov
Irrespective of nationality, soldiers are always open to the same discomfort and to the same comradeship the world over. I'll make things easy for you if you make things easy for me. That is, after all the unwritten law of the barracks.

Peter Ustinov
Revolutions have never succeeded unless the establishment does three-quarters of the work.

Peter Ustinov