Top 100 British People Quotes
#1. The British people have spoken, and there will be a different future for the U.K. - different but a brighter, more optimistic future. We may have to go through some difficult times to get there, but get there we will.
Theresa May
#2. I could have closed down bits of British Home Stores to make more money but it's not my style. I want to make my money as a retailer, not by putting people out of work.
Philip Green
#3. The British Labour Party has always had a very strong "Atlanticist component," with an obsequiousness to American policies, and Blair represents this wing. He's clearly obsessed with Iraq. He has to be because the overwhelming majority of the people of Britain oppose a military action.
John Pilger
#4. The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to see Irish unity.
John Hume
#5. It sounded wrong rolling off his tongue, but still elegant, somehow. Like a British person cussing.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#6. If you are British, you soon get used to people not loving you. The Irish remind us of offenses from 100 years ago. Perhaps we should react to what the French did to us even longer ago.
Mick Jagger
#7. Aunt Helen Beck had many intentions about her death. She was about being dead the way some people are about being British - she wasn't, and it seemed she would never be, but it was clearly something she aspired to, since all the people she respected were.
Elizabeth McCracken
#8. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980s: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish custom but abhor rules.
Khaled Hosseini
#9. Gandhi has asked that the British Government should walk out of India and leave the Indian people to settle differences among themselves, even if it means chaos and confusion.
Stafford Cripps
#10. The most foreign fighters in Iraq are wearing British and American uniforms. The level of self-delusion is bordering frankly on the racist. The vast majority of the people of Iraq are against the occupation of Iraq by the American and British forces.
George Galloway
#11. Mr. Jones's book is a cleareyed examination of the British class system, and it poses this brutal question: 'How has hatred of working-class people become so socially acceptable?' His timely answers combine wit, left-wing politics and outrage.
Dwight Garner
#12. People are kind of upset with British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward. Over the weekend, he was out on his yacht. And when President Obama found out that Tony Hayward was on his yacht, he was so angry, he missed a putt.
David Letterman
#13. From the sea came a boat with some Israeli commando soldiers who took me by the commando boat to the yacht and put me on the yacht. In the yacht I asked people, who are you. And they said we are Israelis, French and British.
Mordechai Vanunu
#14. Now the British are coming. I think Cameron should ask the Chinese government not to make people 'disappear' or to jail them merely because they have different opinions.
Ai Weiwei
#15. To be honest, I would like to have worked with Peter Sellers, because when people talk about classic British actors, you talk about Lawrence Olivier, and Peter Sellers was just in the most amazing films.
Daniel Radcliffe
#16. Mr. Churchill connected truly to what was in the hearts of the British people, which is what a buoyant leader does. One of his most famous quotes is about making mistakes and learning from them. He wasn't shy to admit when things went wrong.
Kevin Allen
#17. I'd like to apologise to the British people for the state our politics is in.
Anna Soubry
#18. The Saudi government uses a lot of British equipment to suppress their own people. But we're happy for our politicians to go on advertising trips to Saudi, selling our weapons at the trade conventions.
Paul Conroy
#19. Perhaps love and attention are really the same thing. One can't exist without the other. The British scholar Avner Offer calls attention "the universal currency of well-being." Attentive people, in other words, are happy people.
Eric Weiner
#20. In the last 15 or 20 years, I've watched the British press simply go to hell. There seems to be no limit, no depths to which the tabloids won't sink. I don't know who these people are but they're little pigs.
John Le Carre
#21. If we go to the 1940s, Nazi Germany - look, we saw it in Britain. Neville Chamberlain told the British people: Accept the Nazis. Yes, they will dominate the continent of Europe, but that is not our problem. Let's appease them. Why? Because it can't be done. We cannot possibly stand against them.
Ted Cruz
#22. It is not yet too late for the Indian people to decide on rapid, ordered progress. I can assure them that the British people are as determined upon self-government for India as they are themselves.
Stafford Cripps
#23. They're very harsh people, the British: hard to impress, very tough on each other, but I rather like that. It's not that the British are more honest - you're just under no illusion with them.
Hugh Laurie
#24. I would say we are a friend in need and I am sure that the Greek people would very much welcome the choice of the British people to come and enjoy Greece, first of all, but also that would be a sign of support.
George Papandreou
#25. When the Canadian confederation took place in 1867, a lot of people in Quebec said, 'Could we have a referendum?' They said, 'Oh, no. In the British tradition, the Parliament can do anything, excluding changing a man into a woman, and, therefore, no referendum' - and that was that.
Jacques Parizeau
#26. The people in the southern provinces have no interest whatsoever to see British forces leave because they're providing security, stability, structure, and relations have always been good ... really between the British forces and the local Iraqis in this area,
Hoshyar Zebari
#27. British scientists say they have developed a super broccoli that can help fight heart disease. You know, if you want to fight heart disease, why don't you come up with a food people will actually eat? Like a super glazed doughnut.
Jay Leno
#28. I have managed to infuriate the bank bosses; acquire a fatwa from the revolutionary guards of the trades union movement; frighten the 'Daily Telegraph' with a progressive graduate payment; and upset very rich people who are trying to dodge British taxes. I must be doing something right.
Vince Cable
#29. I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?
James A. Michener
#30. In film, it's very important to not allow yourself to get sentimental, which, being British, I try to avoid. People sometimes regard sentimentality as emotion. It is not. Sentimentality is unearned emotion.
Ridley Scott
#31. For the past 15 years or so, British governments have tried to persuade the rest of us that the best judges of the national interest are ... businessmen. This may be a ridiculous statement, but
ominously
fewer and fewer people laugh at it.
Neal Ascherson
#32. I think the British people have a strong sense of what is fair.
George Osborne
#33. I think people have got to understand when a murder is committed on British soil, when innocent people have been put at risk by the method that murder is committed then we expect authorities in other parts of the world to co-operate.
Gordon Brown
#34. The British countryside is threatened by people and interests who really do not care for it
Simon Jenkins
#35. The well-being of the British people and the health of our economy are far more important than any government's commitment to a particular strategy, but to change course now would be fatal to the whole counter-inflation strategy.
Geoffrey Howe
#36. I know there are some people in British Columbia who are still holding a vigil for '3rd Rock'.
Wayne Knight
#37. Basically, I have no place in organized politics. By coming to the British Parliament, I've allowed the people to sacrifice me at the top and let go the more effective job I should be doing at the bottom.
Bernadette Devlin
#38. The British people think that if someone is disabled, then they should get all the care and support that we can offer.
George Osborne
#39. I am often struck by the anxious inferiority many well-educated British people display towards the U.S., particularly Londoners dazzled by New York, when many postcolonials are accustomed to regarding Britain's old imperial cosmopolis as the true capital of the western world.
Pankaj Mishra
#40. Earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important
Charles Dickens
#41. If people don't like Marxism, they should blame the British Museum.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#42. I can see how Americans misconstrue British reserve, and I can see how British people misconstrue American enthusiasm. I think I'm somewhere in between the two. Although I'm outgoing, I'm also very private.
Julianne Moore
#43. But more than anything else, for the British folks Irish people were all terrorists. So when we went to Britain, it was always a lot of resistance to U2. And that's why we came to America.
Bono
#45. As many as three million people are expected to attend the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. The security concerns and economic opportunities are great for both Canada and Washington state.
Rick Larsen
#46. 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.
Tony Blair
#47. 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.
Julie Andrews
#48. Maybe it's a good idea," said Kathy.
"Why is that?"
"Well - you have a British sensibility."
"What does that mean?"
"I just mean people over there might like it." She gestured in the direction of England.
Charlie Close
#49. There is no conflict between best in British class and being a global newspaper. We are an international newspaper rooted in the City of London, and I think people understand that. The 'FT' stands out as a global niche product.
Lionel Barber
#50. The British theatre and establishment is so hard to penetrate, and there are so many talented people involved in it. So, to be counted among some of those actresses ... It doesn't get better than that.
Kelly Reilly
#51. As for myself, my course is clear. A British subject I was born - a British subject I will die. With my utmost effort, with my latest breath, will I oppose the 'veiled treason' which attempts by sordid means and mercenary proffers to lure our people from their allegiance.
John A. Macdonald
#52. Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country's British heritage
Tony Abbott
#53. I wanted to work with Mike Leigh. I had my list of British people I wanted to work with, and I wanted to work with David Lynch and Woody Allen.
Carmen Ejogo
#54. A British pressing with a compilation of the best stuff really, I mean actually not only that but, these were all kind of semi hits for the people on it in America.
Eric Clapton
#55. No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum
David Cameron
#56. I thought, If people are going to write about what I'm wearing, then I would wear young British designers who need the publicity.
Emma Watson
#58. I've been proud to be national champion. I've really enjoyed it. I have very little opportunity to remind people that I'm British and it's a nice way of staying in touch. I'm going to defend it fiercely. I want to keep it.
David Millar
#59. A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets.
George Orwell
#60. As we conduct our negotiations it must be a priority to allow British companies to trade with the single market in goods and services but also, to regain more control of the numbers of people who are coming here from Europe.
Theresa May
#61. According to Okonkwo, the British via its indirect rule system ensured that Africans saw their native leaders as the demons who betrayed their people. He called it a demonocracy and that was the first time I had seen him become so passionate about issues that affect Africa as a people and continent.
S.A. David
#62. Most people in this country are very fair-minded; they understand we're in the middle of a very difficult journey of repairing, rescuing, restoring our British economy, and they want us, and they want particularly Liberal Democrats in government, to fight for the fairest possible way of doing that.
Nick Clegg
#63. For the first five years of my life, I grew up in a log cabin in coastal British Columbia in a very small town, like 300 people, mostly hippies. No running water, no electricity. When I was 12, I changed my name from Dharma to Stewart. At that age, you just want to be normal.
Stewart Butterfield
#64. I'm proud to be British but there is nothing patriotic about a lack of a plan as to what even would happen if we came out there's nothing patriotic about putting people's jobs at risk.
Ruth Davidson
#65. I love London. I would move here. I like British people; everybody is so down to earth.
Verne Troyer
#66. If we left the European Union, it would be a one-way ticket, not a return. So we will have time for a proper, reasoned debate. At the end of that debate you, the British people, will decide.
David Cameron
#67. You'll get unsociable people whatever the nationality, colour, race or creed. I guess the British abroad have probably got the worst record of anyone.
Ken Loach
#68. we laughed awkwardly, in the way British people do when they are experiencing great emotion.
Jojo Moyes
#69. As long as it was just a matter of graft and the lust for power, the British treated the people they robbed as human beings. It was religion that made them treat them like devils
Wendy Doniger
#70. 'Hot Fuss' was all based on fantasy. The English influences, the makeup - they were what I imagined rock was. I'm a dreamer, you know? So I dug into that dream and made 'Hot Fuss.' But hearing people call us 'the best British band from America' made me wonder about my family and who I was.
Brandon Flowers
#71. People fail you, children disappoint you, thieves break in, moths corrupt, but an Order of the British Empire goes on for ever.
Fay Weldon
#72. The Americans think British T.V. shows are amazing, and everybody references 'Downton Abbey', and, in my genre, 'Doctor Who', which everyone is crazy for. People are always asking me and are always disappointed that I haven't been in it.
Jaime Murray
#73. I considered the attacks on London useless, and I told the Fuhrer again and again that inasmuch as I knew the English people as well as I did my own people, I could never force them to their knees by attacking London. We might be able to subdue the Dutch people by such measures but not the British.
Hermann Goring
#74. I shall endeavor to marshal British opinion against a course of action which would bring in my opinion the greatest evils upon the people of India, upon the people of Great Britain and upon the British Empire itself.
Winston Churchill
#75. I go out with a lot of British people. Some of them say I sound a little tipsy.
Callan McAuliffe
#76. The young people working for me are ambitious and hard-working. That work ethic has always been a trait of the British.
Simon Cowell
#77. We're seeing a crazy appetite for people to acquire and invest in British businesses.
Natalie Massenet
#78. My love of the British is equal to that of my own people.
Mahatma Gandhi
#79. They [British people] told us to restore democratic control of immigration policy and to spend their money on national priorities such as health, education and science instead of giving it to Brussels.
Michael Gove
#80. I swear, I didn't really go in thinking, 'I'll be the Simon Cowell' of 'Top Chef.' I was just used to being a judge on British food shows where people are much more outspoken and rather rude. That's the culture over here.
Toby Young
#81. It is equally important that we now secure the right deal for Britain - and the next leader must have the skill and credibility to put together the right team to renegotiate our exit from and future relationship with Europe and explain the final terms to the British people.
Nicky Morgan
#82. Lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications
Charles Dickens
#83. I am in the habit, like most British people, of holding the door open for people. But in the U.S., people don't understand it. You get odd looks or doors slammed in your face.
Raza Jaffrey
#84. Despite the absence of Queen Elizabeth II's name in annual Forbes Rich Lists, everyone in the room was aware the Queen was one of the wealthiest people in the world, if not the wealthiest. However, hers and the House of Windsor's assets and income were mostly non-declared.
James Morcan
#85. The English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human
Charles Dickens
#87. Any criticism of Thatcher throws a dangerously absurd light on the entire machinery of British politics. Thatcher's name must be protected, not because of all the wrong that she had done, but because the people around her allowed her to do it.
Morrissey
#88. British monarchy exists not to exercise power but to keep other people from having the power.
Ketevan Gogelia
#89. Britain's unique success as an industrialised nation-state prompted strong imitative endeavours not only across Europe, but also in Asia. Now many people, who were once humiliated into a sense of nationality by British rule, loom larger than their former masters.
Pankaj Mishra
#90. A lot of the time, the British press make me ashamed and embarrassed to be British. They give others the impression that the British are selfish, envious and bitter people, which is simply not true in my opinion. I think that British people in general are really nice and friendly.
Melanie Chisholm
#91. The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensity
Joe Perry
#92. Americans are a lot more open, of course. There's something more declamatory in the way you express emotions. It's a stereotype but it's true. British people can appear repressed in expressing emotions. Not very good at self-evaluating, or affirming situations, touching, anything like that.
Emily Blunt
#93. The way to bring out the best in the British people is to attack them.
Alasdair MacIntyre
#94. I claim to have been a lifelong and wholly disinterested friend of the British people.
Mahatma Gandhi
#95. Overall his period in office can only be characterised as a decade of missed opportunities in which the hopes of the British people for a new kind of politics were shattered [on Tony Blair]
Menzies Campbell
#96. We embrace policies that have, first and foremost, the continued survival of the British people at their core, and in that respect I think we are beyond left and right.
Steve Blake
#97. There is certainly a higher percentage of wit in British comedy than in American comedy. What always tickles me is the way in which people try to use their intellect to get themselves out of tricky situations but never quite manage to do so - much to their enormous embarrassment.
Christopher Lloyd
#98. I am not talking about the American people and the British people, I am talking about those mercenaries ... They have started throwing those pencils, but they are not pencils, they are booby traps to kill the children.
Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf
#99. I'm always surprised that people make such a fuss about Italian tailoring and French design houses. I think traditional British tailoring for men is so good. Everything's the right cut, the fabrics are good.
Sean Lennon
#100. I am very proud I was part of the IRA in Derry and involved in repelling the designs of the British state forces against people who were being treated as second- and third-class citizens.
Martin McGuinness
