Top 100 British With Quotes
#1. Holy crap, this is Dynasty except British with a better wardrobe and set in the early 1900s, I whispered to the TV.
Kristen Ashley
#2. If there is to be any hope of prosperity for this country it is by reversing that policy which made us simply the kitchen garden for supplying the British with cheap food.
Eamon De Valera
#3. I think my favorite is Honor Blackman because she is classy and she is British. With Bond, I love how British it is actually. She is classy and clever and smart and sharp.
Gemma Arterton
#4. and Derry (give me a minute, give me a minute), but there's not much to compare with the British Museum,
Anonymous
#5. To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.
Margaret Thatcher
#6. 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
#7. We have to get tough with the Russians. They don't know how to behave. They are like bulls in a china shop. They are only 25 years old. We are over 100 and the British are centuries older. We have got to teach them how to behave.
Harry S. Truman
#8. 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
#9. In Britain, these Jewish refugees were greeted with a mixture of grudging acceptance by some and open hostility by others.
Thomas Harding
#10. I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?
James A. Michener
#11. Extraordinarily, I was up in the cemetery in Derry City, and I had a red cape on with a fur hood as a little girl, when a gun battle broke out between the IRA and the British Army, and I got caught in the crossfire.
Roma Downey
#12. British Columbia has been described as a banana republic, only with bigger bananas,
John Vaillant
#13. The British who arrived in the United States in the eighteen-thirties and forties had imagined the young republic as a wide-eyed adolescent, socially ungainly and politically gauche, but with some hint of promise.
Simon Schama
#14. I wil not compare the education of an ancient Spartan with that of a British nobleman.
Thomas Day
#15. Americans like the British kind of quirkiness and the strange accent. They find it kind of cute or something, with a certain charm.
Nick Park
#16. I think you can look at the British economy with confidence.
George Osborne
#17. The Annual Register for 1763 tabulated the casualty list for British sailors in the Seven Years' War with France. Out of 184,899 men raised or rounded up for the war, 133, 708 died from disease, primarily scurvy, while only 1,512 were killed in action.
Stephen R. Brown
#18. Since I first fell in love with choral music when I was 18 and began composing at 21, I've been listening to these recordings of British choirs. I just fell in love with that sound - that pure, clean, pristine sound - and I think it's probably been the biggest influence on my sound.
Eric Whitacre
#19. 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
#20. The British academic Richard Schoch, in his book The Secrets of Happiness, put it this way: "Your imagination must, to some extent, be found in a realm beyond reason because it begins with imagining a future reality: the self that you might become.
Eric Weiner
#21. I feel that an understanding could be reached with Germany which would result in a lasting peace with Europe and believe that a German victory is preferable to a British and Soviet victory.
Pierre Laval
#22. Ever since the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the Muslim world has been in slow decline relative to the west. With Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and the creeping British annexation of Muslim India, that decline took on a malign aspect.
James Buchan
#23. If you spend any time in Washington you'll find nerds. What happens is most of them sublimate their fixations with comics, or baseball cards, or 1960s British comedies to policy minutiae and political arcana. But, like Christians in ancient Rome, you can still spot them if you know the signals.
Jonah Goldberg
#25. I am a subject of the British Crown, but whenever I have to choose between the interests of England and Canada it is manifest to me that the interests of my country are identical with those of the United States of America.
Wilfrid Laurier
#26. As for the British churchman, he goes to church as he goes to the bathroom, with the minimum of fuss and no explanation if he can help it.
Ronald Blythe
#27. I've never been embedded with American soldiers or British soldiers or Iraqi soldiers or any other.
Robert Fisk
#28. If you came from Mars and tried to analyse British or American society through novels, you'd think our society was preponderantly full of middle-aged, slightly alcoholic, middle-class, intellectual men, most of whom are divorced from their families and have nothing to do with children.
Mark Haddon
#29. I'm obsessed with the Victorian era and the British Royal Navy ... I'd love to play a troubled sailor or captain or a boatman on a three masted ship.
Nick Offerman
#30. That was after Napoleon died because there is still a controversy as to whether Napoleon was poisoned with arsenic. And the French say the British did it and the British say the French did it, but he died before the test for arsenic was available.
Michael Baden
#31. Lying there in bed, dangling in a zone somewhere between sleep and consciousness, he was overcome by a strange feeling: that he was losing control of his life, and for the first time in recent years was unsure of the direction it was taking him. Carl Dias reflects on life in RACING WITH THE RAIN
Ken Puddicombe
#32. The situation in the West Bank and Gaza involves a military occupation amid urban guerrilla warfare, analogous to the British security measures in Northern Island, that hopefully will end with a cease-fire.
Jack Schwartz
#33. I will walk on no grave of Ulster's honoured dead to do a deal with the IRA or the British government.
Ian Paisley
#34. My thesis was on kinetics studies with the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase. When that was finished, I was granted a British Council Fellowship to work under the supervision of Malcolm Dixon.
Cesar Milstein
#35. I'd like to talk in my own accent, but then there's that thing about getting typecast as, 'The British guy.' The role that makes you, that's normally what you're cast as forever more. Like, if I did a huge film with my British accent, that would be that.
Ryan Cartwright
#36. Christianity in India is inextricably mixed up for the last hundred and fifty years with the British rule.
Mahatma Gandhi
#37. We cannot, with good conscience, expect the British to set up an orderly schedule for the liberation of India before we have decided for ourselves to make all who live in America free.
Wendell Willkie
#38. I think that we must come together progressively, with the British, the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians and with the new members of the European Union, we must make an effort to forge closer links.
Jean-Pierre Raffarin
#39. Through crowdfunding anyone can find companies and products.Forming a partnership with innovative British businesses was appealing and the opportunity to go on a journey with these companies as they grow, and hopefully share in their future success, is exciting.
Andy Murray
#40. Mr. Bates was sober, with that manly, British, churchman-like sobriety which can carry a few glasses of grog without any perceptible clarification of ideas.
George Eliot
#41. The British Government very naturally would like to see in India the form of democratic constitutions it knows best and thinks best, under which the Government of the country is entrusted to one or other political party in accordance with the turn of elections.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
#43. What did I want with prestige? The British Open paid the winner $600 in American money. A man would have to be two hundred years old at that rate to retire from golf.
Sam Snead
#44. Hitler delivered petulant speeches that fall warning the outside world and particularly the British to mind their own business and to quit concerning themselves "with the fate of Germans within the frontiers of the Reich.
William L. Shirer
#45. Outside my window, the British public traded crack, slept with itself for money, and fought drunken battles it couldn't remember in the morning.
Hugh Laurie
#46. We remain united with the British, and our allies around the world, in our resolve to defeat terrorism and bring those who commit these acts to justice.
Doc Hastings
#47. Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality.
Rupert Murdoch
#48. I'm quite British in the sense of not expressing my emotions much. I save it for my songs. If you ask about a death in the family, or a lover, I will not be emotional. I'd probably answer with a smile. Because that's what we British blokes do.
James Blunt
#49. Things have changed so much, with Facebook and Twitter. Everyone is so much more accessible these days: no British athlete has ever experienced what we are experiencing now. It's such a unique situation with the home Olympics.
Jessica Ennis
#50. The rest of Europe tends to be very comfortable with sexuality. The British and the Americans are kind of hung up about it.
Steve Coogan
#51. Hey, I saw this old British movie, all the people spoke so different, you could hardly understand them. But everyone here speaks American as good as you and me. What's with that?
Max Barry
#52. There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose.
Thomas Jefferson
#53. A traditional fixture at Wimbledon is the way the BBC TV commentary box fills up with British players eliminated in the early rounds.
Clive James
#54. Gandhi has more recently recognized the need for continuance of British, American and Chinese efforts in India and has suggested that these troops might remain by agreement with some new Indian Government.
Stafford Cripps
#55. The Brit abroad is always the voice of caution. Persons of other cultures are known to be undisciplined, prone to leaning out of car windows and cooking with garlic.
Nick Harkaway
#56. In a brilliant lecture written in 1944, C. S. Lewis described the fatal British obsession with the 'inner ring', the belief that somewhere, just beyond reach, is an exclusive group holding real power and influence, which a certain sort of Englishman constantly aspires to find and join.
Ben Macintyre
#57. We have to ensure that our immigration system works in the interests of Britain, enabling us to make a realistic promise to our young school-leavers. It is part of our contract with the British people.
Iain Duncan Smith
#58. After college, I funded my short films with acting roles in film and TV. I learned my craft through the great opportunities British television gave me as a director.
Justin Chadwick
#59. Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party's gone.
Arthur Scargill
#60. It often horrified the English community that she spent her time with local farmers and horse traders, eccentrics and mystics, but she valued expertise over convention and had long believed if you were going to make discoveries in the world you must first quit your Englishness and open your eyes.
Sara Sheridan
#61. As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later.
Alistair Cooke
#62. It is also absolutely correct that some British folk customs have descended directly from pagan rituals, such ... the giving of presents and decoration of homes with greenery at midwinter.
Ronald Hutton
#63. Teaching the history of the British Empire links in with that of the world: for better and for worse, the Empire made us what we are, forming our national identity. A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.
Antony Beevor
#64. Red Bull are backing a spinal-injury research charity called Wings For Life, which I am an ambassador for, with a programme called Faces for Charity that will run at this year's British Grand Prix.
Mark Webber
#65. Seriously. What was with British people? They didn't hug, and they sang their national anthem as if they ruled the world, which in fact was actually quite the opposite of true.
Rachel Van Dyken
#66. I speak pretty fluent American, though I do so with a strong British accent, and I love America: The scale and the variety of it are astonishing to someone not born there, and I'm convinced that its energy and generosity have somehow rubbed off on me and affected my writing. For the better.
Laurie Graham
#67. Lahore, the second largest city of Pakistan, ancient capital of the Punjab, home to nearly as many people as New York, layered like a sedimentary plain with the accreted history of invaders from the Aryans to the Mongols to the British.
Mohsin Hamid
#68. In India, as we saw, the Sepoy Mutiny led to a vast reorganization of British colonialism in the area, sending out a viceroy from London and before too long, Queen Victoria was proclaimed "Empress of India," with this great empire, ruling over maharajahs and other local potentates.
Webster Tarpley
#69. With or without the Royals, we are not Americans. Nor are we British. Or French. Or Void. We are something else. And the sooner we define this, the better.
Will Ferguson
#70. It came as a great shock to me when I heard that England and Soviet Russia had become allies. So much so that I thought that the people responsible in London were acting in a manner that no longer coincided with British imperial interests.
John Amery
#71. Weed was confident that the British would have no idea anything was amiss with Seward's presidential aspirations and would treat him with the respect afforded to the next leader of the Americans.
Anonymous
#72. The British leadership has acknowledged that it only became possible to end the violence in North Ireland when it stopped thinking of the [Irish Republican Army] as "a terrorist organization" and began treating it as a political actor with genuine grievances that deserved to be addressed.
Richard A. Falk
#73. British flight attendants warn you not to tamper with the smoke detectors in the aircraft toilets, whereas American flight attendants warn you not to tamper with, disable or destroy them.
Terry Eagleton
#74. One of the best things about the award season is that when a British film succeeds at the Oscars and BAFTAs, such as 'Slumdog Millionaire' in 2009 and 'The King's Speech' this year, the British public get right behind it with an immense sense of national pride.
Gurinder Chadha
#75. Hermione end up with Ron. As the author told Emma Watson, guest editor for the upcoming edition of the quarterly British lifestyle magazine "Wonderland,
Anonymous
#76. Set we forward; let
A Roman and a British ensign wave
Friendly together. So through Lud's town march,
And in the temple of the great Jupiter
Our peace we'll ratify, seal it with feasts.
Set on there! Never was a war did cease,
Ere bloody hands were washed, with such a peace.
William Shakespeare
#77. There was a happy irony in the first cousin of the autocratic Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II (with whom George bore a striking resemblance) furthering British democracy.
Paul Ham
#78. Chase stooped to inspect it. Angelo handed him a latex glove, which took Chase three attempts to pull on before tearing it. He had never had a good relationship with latex. He tried two more, tearing each one of those too.
Stefania Mattana
#79. Catering on planes, like on British Rail, is a standing joke, but I don't really have a problem with it. I don't quite know what people expect.
Phil Collins
#80. Yes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on.
James Connolly
#81. It's a phenomenon that I see with young actors - a lot of American speaking parts going to British actors.
Michael Douglas
#82. The British hamburger thus symbolised, with savage neatness, the country's failure to provide its ordinary people with food which did anything more for them than sustain life.
Clive James
#83. Rose West was starting 10 life sentences with no prospect of ever being released, Fred West had gone to hell, I had got my life back and the media circus had moved on to the next big scoop.
Stephen Richards
#84. The spread of personal ownership is in harmony with the deepest instincts of the British people. Few changes have done more to create one nation.
Nigel Lawson
#85. To be the first British athlete to win a gold is amazing, but to win it in the U.K. is something else. Also, having my family here with me has made it extra special, and I know all my friends back home have been cheering me on and putting posters in their windows. I want to thank them all.
Jade Jones
#86. The tall, thin serious man strode in, his dark cloak billowing so dramatically it threatened to extinguish the lamp flame with its draught. He advanced like a malevolent shadow consuming the dim orange light, filling the room with a presence almost more than human.
Gregory Figg
#87. American grammar doesn't have the sturdiness of British grammar (a British advertising man with a proper education can make magazine copy for ribbed condoms sound like the Magna goddam Carta), but it has its own scruffy charm
Stephen King
#88. The earliest witch-trial in the British Isles shows animal sacrifice. In 1324 in Ireland Lady Alice Kyteler 'was charged to haue nightlie conference with a spirit called Robin Artisson, to whom she sacrificed in the high waie .ix. red cocks'.[610]
Anonymous
#89. I have been long associated with British music. I have favoured it as my alternate music next to American.
Leonard Slatkin
#90. We've always had a pretty competitive and pretty ferocious battle with British Airways ... It's lasted now about 14 years, and we're very pleased to have survived it.
Richard Branson
#91. The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later, the vicious politics of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan.
Pankaj Mishra
#92. She said Halloween is a British tradition and it has nothing to do with being a Christian. I almost said Why do you celebrate it then 'cos I always forgot she was born in England.
Annabel Pitcher
#93. I've always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden's animations.
Stephen Fry
#94. I wouldn't even have braces on my teeth. I think they are horrible, and this idea that everyone should conform and be perfect is ridiculous. I like the fact I have good old-fashioned British teeth with a big gap. Who wants those gleaming white cosmetically enhanced American teeth?
Georgia May Jagger
#95. The promise to use the money we currently send to Brussels and invest it instead on the priorities of the British people - principally in the NHS - and to cut VAT on domestic fuel. With my leadership, it will be delivered.
Michael Gove
#96. I'm still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent - you get contaminated after so long.
Gary Oldman
#97. The extraordinary exertions of the colonies, in cooperation with British measures, against the French, in the late war, were acknowledged by the British parliament to be more than adequate to their ability.
Mercy Otis Warren
#98. [Being in the States] is almost like being on a holiday. It's kind of annoying because everyone's like "Oh, you're so obsessed with America," but it's not really that. I just really enjoy being here - I'm not the first British artist to make music here and be inspired by the country.
Marina And The Diamonds
#99. I love 'I'm British But ... ' It's such a sweet, innocent, open-hearted film, and it has the sort of openness that I still aspire to with everything I do. It wears its heart, head, everything on its sleeve.
Gurinder Chadha
#100. I think it has something to do with being British. We don't take ourselves as seriously as some other countries do. I think a lot of people take themselves far too seriously; I find that a very tedious attitude.
Joan Collins
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