Quotes About Being British

#1. I'm proud of being British, but I think our aristocracy is overrated.

Paloma Faith

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. The problem with being British ... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic, but you never really enjoy success.

Danny Boyle

#5. Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.

Pete Townshend

#6. I'm not as big a soccer fan as people might imagine, being British.

Jason Statham

#7. Being British, I don't really have a way of expressing myself in conversation. Music transcends language.

James Blunt

#8. Hating Britain is a fundamental part of being British

Ben Mitchell

#9. Being British, we tend to think of ourselves as America's best friend. And as your best friend, that gives us a little bit of license to point out things that could have been handled better.

Philip Kerr

#10. When I was a child in the 1940s and early 1950s, my parents and grandparents spoke of Britain as home, and New Zealand had this strong sense of identity and coherence as being part of the commonwealth and a the identity of its people as being British.

Michael King

#11. 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

#12. Years ago, there was a variety theatre in every British town, and people paid to go down and see it. Comedy was the main part of the theatre, and comedians earned a living by being funny. Now you have comedy in television instead. Comedians now have to be funny within a play.

Norman Wisdom

#13. The British people, being subject to fogs, require grave statesmen.

Benjamin Disraeli

#14. 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

#15. We did not lack for religious leaders to urge us into "godly" war [ ... ]. All of this was part of a well-financed propaganda campaign on the part of British agents. As usual, the government of the United States was being "run" by the British Secret Intelligence Service.

Eustace Mullins

#16. The best research for playing a drunk is being a British actor for 20 years.

Michael Caine

#17. What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?

Lynne Truss

#18. The way the British 'Office' got away with being so dark was that it only had 13 episodes. There are realistic elements that people obviously enjoy, but they don't necessarily want to relive the trials and tribulations of their average work day.

John Krasinski

#19. Being a fan of authentic Dada, I find today's art - what I call 'Bankers' Dada' - mind-numbingly dull. The most challenging work I've seen of late is by The British Art Resistance. Their document, 'A Call for Heroes in an Age of Cowards', is apt in these days of witless chancers.

Billy Childish

#20. The prospect of one day being hauled out of the canal by yet another old enemy was hard for France to swallow, even more so when British and French defence specialists discussed their exit strategy in case of an overwhelming Soviet attack, and the Brits proposed a massive evacuation via Dunkirk.

Stephen Clarke

#21. I ... I'm sorry to come like this,' I murmured.
'Stop being so damn British about it-you don't need to apologize. Ssh, it's fine.

Joss Stirling

#22. Why lower oneself to taking pride from being American or British, when you can boast of being man!

Jules Verne

#23. You hear entertainers all the time, saying, 'If I couldn't get paid for this, I'd do it for free.' When's the last time you ever heard a business person say, 'If I couldn't get paid for being chairman of British Petroleum, I'd do it for free'?

Dick Gregory

#24. No. I am not a royalist. Not at all. I am definitely a republican in the British sense of the word. I just don't see the use of the monarchy though I'm fierce patriot. I'm proud proud proud of being English, but I think the monarchy symbolizes a lot of what was wrong with the country.

Daniel Radcliffe

#25. I always thought of myself as being the unluckiest girl I knew. I was, I believed, a 'jinx' and I was 'jinxed', or so I thought!

Stephen Richards

#26. As a child, I was attractive to paedophiles. I suppose being indecently assaulted when I was 13 years old should have warned me that there were some weird and dangerous men out there, but I had got over that episode in my life.

Stephen Richards

#27. The British tend to shy away from the spotlight. We don't like being singled out in any way, and I think that is something which is important for me to learn to do.

Damon Hill

#28. British people still wear clothes. By clothes I mean actual clothes: jackets and shirts and ties and suits. The spirit of Beau Brummell is still visible. English men make an effort. We've lost that in the US. Everyone is more concerned with being comfortable.

Tom Ford

#29. Like, Mission Of Burma to me always sounded almost like they were part of the British Arty New Wave. I kind of like that. I like not being able to tell the difference.

Graham Coxon

#30. 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

#31. I will have nothing to do with a bomb! [Response to being invited (1943) to work with Otto Robert Frisch and some British scientists at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb.]

Lise Meitner

#32. Were British protesters, armed with little more than a frisbee and a bag of plastic toy soldiers, really in danger of being shot by the US military in Gloucestershire?

Mark Thomas

#33. Nova Scotia as a British colony also came into being as another result of these adventurous British expeditions to North America in the reign of James I.

Harry Johnston

#34. It would be a sad day if we British stopped being cynical, but you sometimes wonder whether we overdo it.

Boris Johnson

#35. The British scholar Avner Offer calls attention "the universal currency of well-being." Attentive people, in other words, are happy people. Tashi

Eric Weiner

#36. What good is it, being two stranded British fops in the heart of America, if we don't announce it on Halloween by wearing enormous fuzzy hats for the purpose of our humiliation?

Red Tash

#37. I had forgotten the fact that I had been raped, something no one would understand, how could anyone forget something as traumatic as being raped?

Stephen Richards

#38. [After her election to the British Parliament and being welcomed to 'the most exclusive men's club in Europe':] It won't be exclusive long. When I came in, I left the door wide open!

Nancy Astor

#39. [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

#40. I grew up near the sea in British Columbia and San Francisco, and lived in Malibu and Fiji for years. I get uncomfortable being too far inland.

Raymond Burr

#41. I grew up under the British system, which I think is horrific for children - very, very strict - a system that did not recognize children as being individuals. You were small animals earning the right to be human.

Lorraine Toussaint

#42. I have moved on from being a British parliamentarian, I have moved on from being a New Labour politician, I have moved on from being the supporter in the active day-to-day sense of Tony Blair.

Peter Mandelson

#43. 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

#44. I went being unemployed for three years to being the lead in a British feature in the days when we only made two a year, 1990. It was ridiculous really.

Christopher Eccleston

#45. The reason I feel like I act is because you get to live a million different lives in one. I don't have to go about my life, just being easy-going New Zealander Rose. Sometimes I can inhabit a feisty, vicious character. Sometimes I can inhabit a painfully shy British girl, or whatever it might be.

Rose McIver

#46. Besides, Kristy sees me being nice to old ladies ? Huge turn-on, right ? Girls really like that kind of thing. Except Amber, who won't look at a guy twice unless he's got a British accent and a crazy-ass wife locked in the attic, or whatever, but she is clearly abnormal.

Hannah Johnson

#47. The British census of Palestine in 1922 recorded 84,000 Jews and 670,000 Arabs, of whom 71,000 were Christian, most of the remainder being Muslim.

Lawrence Wright

#48. Being pretty crazy while being chased by the National Enquirer is not good. The British tabloids were the worst.

Margot Kidder

#49. The patriotism in Britain comes from us being a leader. On jobs, on tax havens, on workers' rights, on the environment. We can be leading Europe ... and it will be to the benefit of every British citizen.

Gordon Brown

#50. Our ability to make a decision about the declaration is hampered by the British government being reluctant to give us the clarification which we require.

Martin McGuinness

#51. I was brought up in a family which valued natural history. Both my parents knew the names of all the British wildflowers, so as we went walking the country, I was constantly being exposed to a natural history sort of knowledge.

Richard Dawkins

#52. The French and the British are such good enemies that they can't resist being friends.

Peter Ustinov

#53. Last time I went Intercity there were a couple across the aisle having sex. Of course, this being a British train, nobody said anything. Then they finished, they both lit up a cigarette and this woman stood up and said, Excuse me, I think you'll find this is a non-smoking compartment.

Victoria Wood

#54. My grandfather had come over as a member of the czarist army, to make an arms deal with the British government. Being a blinkered military man, he was unaware that the Russian Revolution was about to take place.

Helen Mirren

#55. The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive.

Lee Child

#56. 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

#57. Being in the European Union has its advantages, and I think that is what the British are beginning to understand, what those who are tempted by the Brexit are going to reflect upon.

Francois Hollande

#58. The joy of my career is I've been very blessed to be able to be an actor in major films, television, theater, and also British radio. In fact, my dream as an actor when I started out was to be able to work in all the media. Thankfully, that's what I'm being given to do.

David Suchet

#59. In Italy, for the same price as a typical British hamburger meal including sweet, a builder's labourer could eat like a king - rather better in fact, because pasta dishes gain from being kept simple.

Clive James

#60. I've gotten more flack from the remake nature of our 'Being Human' from American audiences than I have from British fans. Every fan of the BBC original that I've bumped into seemed very excited and interested in seeing what we did with it - at least to my face!

Samuel Witwer

#61. Not only the priceless heritage of our fathers, of our seamen, of our Empire builders is being thrown away in a war that serves no British interests - but our alliance leader Stalin dreams of nothing but the destruction of that heritage of our fathers?

John Amery

#62. We were being offered exile on condition that we were silent about the reason we needed it. The silence chafed; it made us feel we were betraying those we had left behind. The British government was insisting on dealing with Hitler as a reasonable fellow, as if hoping he'd turn into one.

Anna Funder

#63. 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

#64. Short of being prime minister there isn't a better job in British politics than running London.

Ken Livingstone

#65. They [some countries] borrowed money to go acquire things, Indian power plants and Danish newspapers and British soccer teams. And they did it willy-nilly, and they themselves a story, that Icelandic history and culture and DNA leaves us very well-suited to being investment bankers.

Michael Lewis

#66. 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

#67. Marriage commissioners who choose not to marry homosexuals are being fired. A Knights of Columbus chapter in British Columbia is in court because it chooses not allow a lesbian group to use its facility for marriage ceremonies. The list goes on.

Stockwell Day

#68. 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

#69. So she will," said the Dowager. "You'll see that young man in the Cabinet before very long. Such a handsome couple on a public platform, and very sound, I'm told, about pigs, and that's so important, the British breakfast-table being what it is.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#70. We thought being offered the M.B.E. [Member of the Order of the British Empire] was as funny as everybody else thought it was. Why? What for? We didn't believe it. It was a part we didn't want. We all met and agreed it was daft.

John Lennon

#71. British actors are renowned for being great villains in movies, like Bond films, all the rest of it.

Luke Evans

#72. I once worked at a record label called London Records. The company was owned by Roger Ames, one of the most successful figures in the British music industry. Roger always placed a value on loafing, on holidays, on not being in the office all the time.

John Niven

#73. If you look back at British history, women being allowed to play sport in schools meant they had to change their clothing. They couldn't be running around in their long skirts and corsets, because you can't.

Clare Balding

#74. The way British publishing works is that you go from not being published no matter how good you are, to being published no matter how bad you are.

Tibor Fischer

#75. For me, it's about being a star, being a superstar, and not just winning a world title but becoming the best-ever British fighter this country has ever had. That's what I am, and that's what I intend to do.

Tyson Fury

#76. The British love of queuing and discomfort and being bossed around seems to have found a new outlet in the pop festival.

Craig Brown

#77. I have always liked clothes and fashion. And really, being a British male, I am automatically the best dressed person in any room - especially in America.

Tom Odell

#78. According to them, everyone wants to be English. Being English is the best thing in the world. (Far behind, the second best thing is being God himself.)

Angela Kiss

#79. Fish cakes are perceived as being quite British, and they're always a bit brown and a little dull.

Yotam Ottolenghi

#80. When I got to Florida, I was a British kid, but I was also an Indian kid: a brown kid with an English accent. Talk about being an outsider. And that's become the theme of a lot of the stuff I write about.

Aasif Mandvi

#81. I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.

Clement Attlee

#82. I think there's a certain objectivity that comes from being Canadian. You're partly British and partly American; you have a good bird's-eye view of both countries. So much of the comedy that comes out of Canada is impersonation - it's less 'look at me' than it is 'look at me playing other people.'

Eric McCormack

#83. I like to be comfortable, but I do enjoy being a British gent and dressing up a bit.

Robbie Williams

#84. I've heard the sound of 70 condoms being scraped over the floor at the British Museum. It feels like being an adventurer. Why would you stay in your living room if you could go out and experience things no one's ever experienced?

Herbert

#85. It's an ironic thing about being an immigrant kid, growing up - 'cause I grew up in the UK and went to a British boarding school and we would go to chapel every Sunday morning. And we'd actually have religious studies and religious studies means Christian studies where you study the Bible.

Aasif Mandvi

#86. 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

#87. He was flying over India now, still making notes. He remembered hearing an Indian politician on TV talking about the British prime minister and being unable to pronounce her name properly. "Mrs. Torture," he kept saying. "Mrs. Margaret Torture." This was unaccountably funny.

Salman Rushdie

#88. The British Army has a fine tradition of being so distracted by what it is currently up to it stubbornly refuses to look round the corner, let alone into the future.

Patrick Hennessey

#89. I've always dreamed of being a 'Burberry Girl', but know it'll never happen, because I'm not British. Still, you can't stop a girl from dreaming. And owning way too many Burberry coats!

Nina Dobrev

#90. 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

#91. the government was in danger of being overthrown. If it had succeeded, it would have earned the dubious distinction of being the very first armed takeover of an elected government in an ex-British colony in the West Indies.

MiddleRoad Publishers

#92. Look, I've always said from the word go many years ago that I felt the whole bonus culture, they need to think very carefully about being detached from the rest of the British public.

Iain Duncan Smith