Top 100 Great British Quotes
#1. And I was asked if I would come and help with the recovery of this great British company, Cable and Wireless, and I'm delighted to become part of the new and very talented management that have been brought in to that company as well.
Lord Robertson
#2. I was at a party in 1989 and Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie were sitting on a sofa wondering where the next generation of great British writers would come from. As we talked, it became clear they had never read a word by me.
Jeanette Winterson
#3. I've been going to Bicester Village since I was young. My mum and dad really loved that place, and I always used to stock up on clothes. I love the fact that it supports great British designers.
Rita Ora
#4. Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said Because it is there. Well, space is there, and were going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.
John F. Kennedy
#5. It seems appropriate that the author of '1984' was a British citizen. George Orwell must have seen how easily the great British public's lamb-like disposition toward its leaders could be exploited to create a police state.
Heather Brooke
#6. 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
#7. Yes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on.
James Connolly
#8. My influences were Peter Sellers and the great British character actors.
Tracey Ullman
#9. And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon have to say about the human record so far? He said, "History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind." The same can be said about this morning's issue of The New York Times.
Kurt Vonnegut
#10. We should lay aside every hindrance and endeavour by uniting the whole force and spirit of our people to raise again a great British nation standing up before all the world; for such a nation, rising in its ancient vigour, can even at this hour save civilization.
Winston Churchill
#11. There is a whole bunch of great British actors of my age who aren't film stars or theatre actors; they're very much both.
Harry Lloyd
#12. There's definitely a pattern of great British shows that get reinvented in America and do really well here, but I think 'Torchwood' is a bit different. It's more of a hybrid that doesn't exist as a reinvention.
Bill Pullman
#13. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why she bestowed this particular name upon me I have no idea. Perhaps it had something to do with the great British sea captain Lord Nelson, but that would be only a guess.
Nelson Mandela
#14. I went to the Alabama public schools at a time when my English teachers, all but one of whom was a woman, taught nothing but the classics. They revered the great British and American writers.
Thomas H. Cook
#15. 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
#16. 'War and Peas' by Michael Foreman, one of the great British children's illustrators. His watercolours are so lovely you could almost eat them, just as members of the target audience have been trying to do for decades.
Tobias Hill
#17. Pitt the Younger was a great British Prime Minister. He saved Europe from Napoleon, he was the pilot who weathered the storm. I don't know whether he'd have done it any better or quicker had he been married.
Edward Heath
#19. Katie McGrath got me hooked on the 'Great British Bake Off.' It's ruining my life.
Jessica De Gouw
#20. 'The Moonstone' was all I could have hoped for. A mysterious, cursed jewel, wrested from India, only to be stolen later from a great British mansion. Enigmatic, dangerous priests who follow it across the ocean in hopes of wresting it back.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
#21. 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
#22. London is the financial capital of Europe, a great platform to America and Asia. I love the fact that in British culture you can be whoever you want, and people don't even look at you. I don't feel that in Paris or Milan.
Lapo Elkann
#23. Courtesy is not dead - it has merely taken refuge in Great Britain.
Georges Duhamel
#24. Eventually, the British came to overrule India because there was too much diversity in our unity. They were great expotents and impotents. They started by expoting salt from India and then impoting cloth.' One of the more difficult questions related to Chanakya,
Ashwin Sanghi
#25. Too simple? An idea cannot be too simple. Simple is sometimes great, indeed. The Mahatma had a simple idea, although the British did not like it very much and put him in jail. Simple is good.
Ian B.G. Burns
#26. Margaret Thatcher had more impact on the world than any woman ruler since Catherine the Great of Russia. Not only did she turn around - decisively - the British economy in the 1980s, she also saw her methods copied in more than 50 countries.
Paul Johnson
#27. 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
#28. I'm very fond of the British cinema. I'm a big fan of Martin Campbell and Daniel Craig. I actually find Daniel very inspirational, especially on the physical side of things. He really inspired me to get back into shape when I started to add on a few pounds. I think he's a great role model.
Steven Bauer
#29. 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
#30. In Great Britain the price of food is at a higher level than in any other country, and consequently, the British artisan labours at a disadvantage in proportion to the higher rate of his food.
Joseph Hume
#31. ...There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog's obey'd in office. - Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! Why dost though lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind For which thou whipst her. The usurer hangs the cozener.
William Shakespeare
#32. I had the patriotic conviction that, given great leadership of the sort I heard from Winston Churchill in the radio broadcasts to which we listened, there was almost nothing that the British people could not do.
Margaret Thatcher
#33. And now, Your Majesty," said Strange, "I think it is time we returned to the Castle. You and I, Your Majesty, are a British King and a British magician. Though Great Britain may desert us, we have no right to desert Great Britain. She may have need of us yet.
Susanna Clarke
#35. I pride myself in being an aficionado of the British seaside. Throughout my career, I have visited and worked in many of the famous British resorts, from Great Yarmouth to Largs.
Martin Parr
#36. Unlike a lot of British directors, I hadn't done any theater. But, I had a great mentor who said, What you're looking for is exactly the same thing you've done in your documentaries, which is moments of emotional truth.
Susanna White
#37. 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
#38. I'm not a great guitarist, but I do bits and bobs. I'm mainly a songwriter and a composer. I've done a lot of scoring and some stuff for British pop music that did pretty well, but I've mainly been working on my own stuff with Duncan Sheik.
Matthew James Thomas
#39. Captain James Cook's ship, The Endeavour, hit a coral outcrop in the Great Barrier Reef in 1770. Cook and his crew camped in what is now called Cooktown for nearly two months while making repairs. Then they sailed south, where Cook claimed the east coast of Australia as British territory.
Julie Murphy
#40. Said, and we laughed awkwardly, in the way British people do when they are experiencing great emotion. In
Jojo Moyes
#41. King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.
Benjamin Disraeli
#42. I speak of a Canada where men and women of aboriginal ancestry, of French and British heritage, of the diverse cultures of the world, demonstrate the will to share this land in peace, in justice and with mutual respect.
Pierre Trudeau
#43. Too much of British business and industry feels similarly secure in the warm embrace of the European single market and is failing to recognise that today's great export opportunities lie in the developing world, particularly in Asia.
Nigel Lawson
#44. I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we've had.
Anthony Hopkins
#45. I don't care to analyze acting. On the other hand there is a fascination because distributors are putting out British films. You get films here with great performances you'll never see again. Why compare. We should go after the businessmen.
Tim Roth
#46. The minds of youth are perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rime or to Great Britain; Boys are constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero, or debates upon some political question in the British Parliament.
Noah Webster
#47. The skills of the British intelligence community are a great national asset.
John Scarlett
#48. Amazing what the British do with language; the nuances of politeness. The world's great diplomats, surely.
Anne Rice
#49. I entered the health care debate in response to a statement in the United States press in summer 2009 which claimed the National Health Service in Great Britain would have killed me off, were I a British citizen. I felt compelled to make a statement to explain the error.
Stephen Hawking
#50. Many British people of different faiths follow religious codes and practices and benefit a great deal from the guidance they offer.
Theresa May
#51. The news that Osama Bin Laden is dead will bring great relief to people across the world. Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the worst terrorist atrocities the world has seen - for 9/11 and for so many attacks, which have cost thousands of lives, many of them British.
David Cameron
#52. The loss of India would mark and consummate the downfall of the British Empire. That great organism would pass at a stroke out of life into history.From such a catastrophe there could be no recovery.
Lord Randolph Churchill
#53. Do you like dogs?'
'No.'
'I thought the British were great dog-lovers.'
'We think Americans love dollars, but there must be exceptions.
Graham Greene
#54. I expect myself to do well. I'm not, like, 'Oh, well.' I'm not in that category just yet. I don't play great golf a lot anymore. I do it every now and then. I finished third in the British Open last year, so I know I can still do it.
Fred Couples
#55. It's a great myth that the British public want our soldiers to be sent into harm's way on a bogus prospectus for ignoble reasons. There is nothing patriotic about that. It is the opposite of patriotism.
George Galloway
#56. He (the British soldier) is generally beloved by two sorts of Companion, in whores and lice, for both these Vermin are great admirers of a Scarlet Coat.
Richard Holmes
#57. I like to mix British classics, like a great trench, with fun vintage pieces I find in New York. L.A. style is often very relaxed and comfortable, and I appreciate that effortless feel.
Harley Viera-Newton
#58. In the field of snobbery, Australia is an underdeveloped country; even a few British ex-colonies, regarded as under developed in all other respects, could export a great deal of snobbery to Australia and still have enough to spare for their own, internal needs.
George Mikes
#59. The west has a great deal to answer for in the Middle East, from Britain's belated empire-building after the First World War to the US and British policy that condemns modern Iraq to the material and social squalor of a half-century ago.
James Buchan
#60. I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other.
Thomas Jefferson
#61. Dickens' London was a place of the mind, but it was also a real place. Much of what we take today to be the marvellous imaginings of a visionary novelist turn out on inspection to be the reportage of a great observer.
Judith Flanders
#62. Who," said the man, his accent thick and British, "are you?" "The Great Pumpkin," I responded. "I've risen from the pumpkin patch a bit early because Butters is just that nifty. And you are?
Jim Butcher
#63. The refusal of the British and Russian peoples to accept what appeared to be inevitable defeat was the great factor in the salvage of our civilization.
George C. Marshall
#64. He has been a world champion - great for him - but listen, whenever Lennox Lewis wants to come out of retirement, I'm here waiting for him because I'm the best British fighter to come out of these shores.
Tyson Fury
#65. 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
#66. The great thing about the British SAS was that they viewed war the same way the American Special Operations community did. You didn't win by thinking inside the box and following someone else's rules. You turned the box upside down and made your own rules, no matter what the enemy threw at you.
Brad Thor
#67. The British fans are very intense, maybe even more so than fans in the U.S.! They're great.
Austin Mahone
#68. Before the Civil War, the Southern states were selling a lot of cotton to England and didn't seem to mind British occupation. By and large, the Revolutionary War wasn't at all great for business.
Henry Rollins
#69. I'm for fighting a war on terrorism, not a war in Southwest Asia that Alexander the Great couldn't win, the British Empire couldn't win, the Soviet Union couldn't win. That's stupid. It's a waste of resources; a waste of America's best and brightest.
Kurt Schrader
#70. More than 80 per cent of the British casualties of the Great War were English. More than 80 per cent of the taxation is paid by the English taxpayers. We are entitled to mention these facts, and to draw authority and courage from them.
Winston Churchill
#71. I think I come from a theatrical tradition where, if you look at the great theatrical actors of the British theatre, they took enormous pride in being wildly different from one role to the next. That's the tradition I come from.
James Purefoy
#72. You know, the blond guy plays the good guy and I play the bad part, the bad guys. Which is a lot of fun. Playing the bad guy is great. And it's the whole British thing. You know, in so many films the bad guy is British. Gary Oldman makes a living doing that.
Matt Robinson
#73. The actors in Britain are incredible, and I didn't appreciate that until I got there. They interpret your words and you realize how deliberate and thoughtful they are. There are great American actors, too, don't get me wrong, but the technique that British actors have is something really special.
Frank Spotnitz
#74. I studied in Britain and spent great moments of my life there as a student living in Belsize Park. I admire the British trait of the stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. My wife studied in Britain, too, and both of us have many friends there.
Asif Ali Zardari
#75. I've played the leads in two British TV series. I've done a bunch of mini-series. Everybody in Australia is a bit in awe of BBC. I've worked for there, and that was a great experience.
Robert Taylor
#76. His work was so great that it cannot be compassed in a few words. His death is one of the greatest losses ever to occur to British science.
{Describing Ernest Rutherford upon his death at age 66. Thomson, then 80 years old, was once his teacher.}
J.J. Thomson
#77. Surprisingly, it was not an American but a British company that opened an amusement park in 2007 called Dickens World, located in the English county of Kent, complete with an Ebenezer Scrooge Haunted House, a Great Expectations Boat Ride and the as-advertised 'costumed Dickensian characters.'
Matthew Pearl
#78. However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.
Helen Dunmore
#79. When I want to relax, I plop down on my couch and watch some great movie, usually a British drama - anything with Colin Firth.
Cobie Smulders
#80. British actors are renowned for being great villains in movies, like Bond films, all the rest of it.
Luke Evans
#81. [Congress] is not the British Parliament, and I hope it never will become the British Parliament ... Are we going to bring the president in here and have a question period like the prime minister has in Great Britain?
Trent Lott
#82. I think one of the great bits of The Muppet show is that it was set in a 19th century British theater and they live so nicely amongst that lovely old theater.
James Bobin
#83. When people say England, they sometimes mean Great Britain, sometimes the United Kingdom, sometimes the British Isles, - but never England.
George Mikes
#84. I am impressed with the belief that our naval force ought not to cost more in proportion than the British. In some things they may have the advantage, but we will be found to have equally great in others.
John C. Calhoun
#85. 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
#86. It seems to me that Sotheby's is very much like the British monarchy: an old and apparently very venerable institution which is in fact very nimble on its feet, an institution invested with a great deal more self-interest than the public image would suggest.
Robert Lacey
#87. In Great Britain, woman was subordinate and confined. But at least she was also safe.
Linda Colley
#88. That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
Richard Henry Lee
#89. All the best pubs are built on a hill, so you can slope in and roll out.
Benny Bellamacina
#90. Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.
Edmund Burke
#91. There are tons of examples of U.K. and European mistakes. A classic one is pensions. That's obviously not an America-specific thing. The British and European economies are suffering under the weight of what is to come. The next great Ponzi scheme after Madoff is probably pensions.
Dambisa Moyo
#92. The British invented the classic look. Men's apparel was created in London, the great English style. You have to respect this country's suits, shirts, shoes, luggage.
Mickey Drexler
#93. I have no idea what a British sensibility or a British sense of humor is. I have no concept of what that is. I have no concept of what American sensibility is. I was born in Great Britain, but I was only there for six months, and we moved to Belgium, where I grew up.
Frank Oz
#94. It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain; and I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.
Lord Chesterfield
#95. After the conquest of the South Pole by Amundsen who, by a narrow margin of days only, was in advance of the British Expedition under Scott, there remained but one great main object of Antarctic journeying - the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea
Ernest Shackleton
#96. Until 1869, when they were banned, debtors' prisons were the great incinerators of British reputations. Those who were unable to pay their bills were jailed until their creditors were paid - an unlikely event, given that the prisoner was unable to work.
Tina Brown
#97. In other words, the most ardent republicans since the fall of Rome were asking their king to help them prevail over the representative legislature of the world's oldest constitutional monarchy, the great symbol and protector of British freedom. From
Sarah Vowell
#98. 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
#99. Ending the slave trade was contrary to British economic interests. For all its limitations and hypocrisies - British slavery itself, of course, still continued to exist - I still think it was a great moment in human history.
Henry Louis Gates
#100. we laughed awkwardly, in the way British people do when they are experiencing great emotion.
Jojo Moyes
