Quotes About Britain

#1. But I am a knight of the Round Table," he protested, weakly. "I am a protector of the realm, a slayer of evil, I defeat all those who raise their swords in opposition to Arthur, King of all Britain."
"Trust me, kid, women prefer a man who can cook.

Tanya Huff

#2. In America journalism is apt to be regarded as an extension of history: in Britain, as an extension of conversation.

Anthony Sampson

#3. Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring.

Sara Sheridan

#4. I made a very concerted decision to go to drama school in the United States. But I did have the opportunity to go to Britain's Central School of Speech and Drama, and my dad and I had a few tense words about that. He wanted me to go to British drama school.

Kate Burton

#5. It is so important for European countries, post-Second World War, to prove that they can be successful multiethnic and multiracial democracies. I think we in Britain have had great success in avoiding the hatreds and prejudices of the past.

David Cameron

#6. In a much larger sense, the problem of Sabah is directly influenced by the duplicity of imperial Britain. For whatever devious reason, the dismantling of the British empire created divisions and violence due to ethnic and religious differences.

F. Sionil Jose

#7. There are too many countries where the values we take for granted in our civil servants simply do not exist. Seeing these values in action, applied with dedication by hardworking individuals, makes me proud to lead a service that is making life better for millions across Britain.

Gus O'Donnell

#8. The country of Britain is wonderful because of its royalty.

Yayoi Kusama

#9. I think I have been fashioned by the fickle weather of Britain that it is - it's forever changing. There's no kind of constant sun or dry weather or freezing weather, and I'm always having to change and adapt to that.

Andy Goldsworthy

#10. While I enjoy spending time in L.A., Britain is my home.

Michael Sheen

#11. Mass prosperity came with the mass innovation that sprung up in 1815 in Britain, soon after in America, and later in Germany and France: It brought sustained growth to these nations - also to nations with entrepreneurs willing and able to copy the innovations.

Edmund Phelps

#12. Political activists of all stripes are usually a wacky bunch, and never more so than in a system like Britain's, where power is effected via the quiescence of the electorate as much as its convictions.

Will Self

#13. I raised my spear to heaven. 'For God and Britain!' I cried, and my cry was answered in kind. And then I was racing down the hillside, my cloak rippling out behind me, the wind singing from my dark-glinting spearhead.

Stephen R. Lawhead

#14. Britain does not normally these days play a huge part in peacekeeping.

William Hague

#15. The choice is not normally between the north and south. It might be between Britain and Europe.

John Prescott

#16. If we are tough on crime and on terrorism, as Labour is, then I think Britain will be safer under Labour

Peter Hain

#17. What has become clear is that Britain cannot trust the Conservatives to run the economy. Everyone knows that I'm all in favour of apprenticeships, but let me tell you this is no time for a novice.

Gordon Brown

#18. Throughout the 19th century, Britain bought cheaply from the countries of the empire and compelled subject countries to buy our goods at high prices.

Kate Williams

#19. You can't go by what the governments say or do. It's not the governments. It's on the street where there's more hatred of Americans in Britain than in France.

Whit Stillman

#20. I think America and Britain have a different culture from France. They discovered marketing and consumerism before France.

Pierre Dukan

#21. There are very few chefs both in Britain and the States that really identify the secret of being consistent. And combine consistency with flavor.

Gordon Ramsay

#22. Britain does not want a return to boom and bust.

Gordon Brown

#23. There isn't a landscape in the world that is more artfully worked, more lovely to behold, more comfortable to be in, than the countryside of Great Britain. It is the world's largest park, its most perfect accidental garden.

Bill Bryson

#24. Even in the early Eighties, when I was one of the most successful models in Britain, I didn't really have a voice. Time after time, when I should have spoken up, I simply walked away.

Marie Helvin

#25. I think the Canadian sense of humor is dryer than America's and juicier than Britain's. I think it's a cross between the two of them, really.

Scott Thompson

#26. The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.

Abraham Lincoln

#27. I don't just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too. So I speak as British prime minister with a positive vision for the future of the European Union. A future in which Britain wants, and should want, to play a committed and active part.

David Cameron

#28. Eighty percent of the people of Britain want more money spent on public transport - in order that other people will travel on the buses so that there is more room for them to drive their cars.

John Gummer

#29. The reality of any location in Britain being used in a TV program of a film is that something bad is going to happen! That's the nature of drama. Most of the things that get made or basically grisly detective shows about murders, accidents or medical dramas.

Ben Wheatley

#30. Shooting films in Britain is always difficult, because we've never got enough money to make them.

James McAvoy

#31. 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

#32. Let me be absolutely clear: I think it is defeatist to sort of say we want to leave the European Union. We're going to try and change the rules and change the way it works and change the objectives that it has in order to make it something that works for Britain.

Philip Hammond

#33. You cannot tackle Britain's debts without tackling the unreformed welfare system.

George Osborne

#34. The marshalling of those resources in order to obtain the maximum war effort for Australia, and a maximum degree of help and cooperation for Great Britain and the sister Dominions, is the primary objective of the new Department.

Harold Edward Holt

#35. Britain has bred many great explorers, but they seem to get so little coverage compared to soccer and rugby players.

Lewis Gordon Pugh

#36. In Britain, polls show large majorities in favour of mansion taxes and higher taxes on the finance sector.

Geoff Mulgan

#37. The way in which the USA and Great Britain delivered Iraq to the Iraqis, the way and means that this played out, that is the endgame.

Neil Young

#38. English has always had a special fondness for other European languages, a neighborly soft spot - perhaps because Britain has been invaded by speakers of those languages from the onset of its recorded history.

Rabih Alameddine

#39. The sun of her [Great Britain] glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her philosophy has crossed the Channel, her freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolution, whose issue is not given human foresight to scan.

Thomas Jefferson

#40. If Britain votes to leave the European Union, then that could have huge implications for the entire island of Ireland and, given all the predictions, would run counter to the democratic wishes of the Irish people.

Martin McGuinness

#41. For John le Carre, it was always who's betraying who: the hall-of-mirrors kind of thing. When you go back to the '30s, it's a case of good vs. evil, and no kidding. When I have a hero who believes France and Britain are on the right side, a reader is not going to question that.

Alan Furst

#42. Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.

Dean Acheson

#43. In Britain, you do your job. When you do an American TV show, there is a sense of being one with the crew, and there is a leadership element, which was a learning curve for me because it is very different culturally. In Britain, you just do it, leave and say, 'Thanks.'

Theo James

#44. Failure in Afghanistan would have profound consequences for our national security. It would undermine the NATO alliance structure that has been the bedrock of Britain's defence for the last 60 years ... I will not allow this to happen on my watch.

Bob Ainsworth

#45. Britain's legal structure is basically the same as in feudal times: laws are written for the elite.

Heather Brooke

#46. I'll stay until I'm tired of it. So long as Britain needs me, I shall never be tired of it.

Margaret Thatcher

#47. Great Britain be proud, be blessed, be bold! Show the world what are you made of; show them you are made of gold not bronze. Be proud, be blessed,be bold!

Euginia Herlihy

#48. I think we raised about 20,000 pounds. There was a live performance thing so we thought we'd donate the equipment for an online charity in Britain. I hated to part with my guitar, but it was for such a great cause.

Dan Hawkins

#49. Did I want Britain to remain in the E.U.? Yes. Did I fear the consequences if we quit? Yes. Did I argue passionately for that during the referendum? Absolutely I did.

George Osborne

#50. Tara: So what does "Captain Britain's agent" actually do?
Wisdom: Between you and me, Tara, it's work, work, work. I'm in charge of Brian's hair.

Paul Cornell

#51. The trouble with the Labour Party leadership and the trade union leadership, they're quite willing to applaud millions on the streets of the Philippines or in Eastern Europe, without understanding the need to also produce millions of people on the streets of Britain.

Arthur Scargill

#52. Britain makes it absolutely, blindingly clear that it is liberal social welfare policies. And they have turned a good chunk of their native population into animals. They are absolute animals. They are not humans with free will. They eat, they screw, they drink.

Ann Coulter

#53. Like many people in Britain, I have an affectionate respect for the Queen, and am surprised that I should be having such republican thoughts.

A. N. Wilson

#54. I don't think there are really enough meetings in Britain for our athletes to compete properly, and because of this a lot of the talent we have has been stunted.

Linford Christie

#55. I hope there will be continued U.K. investment in human spaceflight to enable Britain to benefit from space travel in the longer term and that many more Britons - women and men - will travel into space.

Helen Sharman

#56. The discovery, that at no time did this man (Hitler) pose or intend a real threat to Britain or the Empire.

David Irving

#57. When I was doing 'Britain's Got Talent,' I really enjoyed it, but I found it very difficult to be in the audience. I like to be on stage; I feel safer on stage because I'm in control.

David Hasselhoff

#58. In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.

Roger Scruton

#59. Britain in the 1970s was undoubtedly an economic mess because of the oil price explosion.

Barbara Castle

#60. If the situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate, Britain will argue for Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in March.

Jack Straw

#61. I think Britain has this tradition which suggests that if you make the readers laugh too much, you can't really be serious. Whereas, I think one of the functions laughter can perform in a book, as in life, is that it's a reaction to genuine horror.

Mark Haddon

#62. Britain's passion for Christmas and huge white weddings dates from Victorian times - both were low-key celebrations before Victoria and her PR machine.

Kate Williams

#63. I have no time for those who say there is no way Scotland could go it alone. I know first-hand the contribution Scotland and Scots make to Britain's success - so for me there's no question about whether Scotland could be an independent nation.

David Cameron

#64. We in Britain stopped evolving gastronomically with the advent of the pie. Everything beyond that seemed like a brave, frightening new world. We knew the French were up to something across the Channel, but we didn't want anything to do with it.

John Oliver

#65. The United Kingdom and the European Union will remain indispensable partners of the United States even as they begin negotiating their ongoing relationship to ensure continued stability, security and prosperity for Europe, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the world.

Barack Obama

#66. Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience,he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain.

Thomas Paine

#67. I love New York, but I have to admit that I feel very English, and I do miss that sense of history that you have everywhere in Britain.

Charlie Cox

#68. Germany's Angela Merkel exudes an atmosphere of elderly exhaustion and pooped-out pessimism. Britain's David Cameron, though by nature exuberant, feels he has to look and sound glum. And France's leader, Francois Hollande, seems determined to drive every successful businessman out of the country.

Paul Johnson

#69. No specific technology. My guess is that it was the instinct always to go to maximum scale. Great Britain kept much more of a small shop mindset well into the twentieth century, for instance.

Charles R. Morris

#70. [I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.

Thomas Jefferson

#71. To those who say Britain cannot afford to invest in infrastructure, I say we cannot afford not to invest in our future.

Philip Hammond

#72. I think Brits probably feel that Americans are more like us than vice-versa, if that makes sense. Because we get everything American over here in Britain, but yet there are things which are staunchly English that you guys don't have.

Hayley Atwell

#73. The Financial Times is pro-British membership of the European Union. We have taken that position for decades. But we are not starry-eyed about the European Union. And we do not believe and have not believed for at least 10 years that Britain should be part of the euro.

Lionel Barber

#74. In Britain, you know there are people waiting to tear your stuff apart, so it's important for me to know that my music has subtleties and depth to it.

Calvin Harris

#75. The right place for a terrorist is a prison cell; the right place for a foreign terrorist is a foreign prison cell far away from Britain.

Theresa May

#76. The national strike of the miners in 1972 performed, I believe, a great service, not only to the miners, but the people in Britain today who wanted coal

Michael Foot

#77. Britain has no divine right to be one of the richest countries in the world.

George Osborne

#78. 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

#79. If Britain is going to investigate journalists as terrorists - take and destroy our documents, force us to give up passwords and answer questions - how can we be sure we can protect our sources?

Sarah Harrison

#80. In an era of billion-person countries and trillion-pound economies, we need to find ways to amplify our voice. We are most likely to be heard when the Chinese negotiate with a £10 trillion E.U., not a £1.5 trillion Britain.

Douglas Alexander

#81. As we travel around Britain, I am convinced most of us cannot really appreciate what we are seeing. We take too much for granted, because it is all so familiar.

Martin Parr

#82. Pointing out the possible, and expensive, entanglements that could come with widespread commercial enterprise, the author calculates the Great Britain was at war half the time between 1689 and 1783.

John Ferling

#83. 'Doctor Who' is, unavoidably, a product of mid-twentieth-century debates about Britain's role in the world as its empire unravelled.

Jill Lepore

#84. It's not Africa that is destroying the African rainforest, it's selling concessions to timber companies that are not African, they are from the developed world - Japan, America, Germany, Britain.

Jane Goodall

#85. It is worth recalling that Britain, over several centuries, waged a war against homosexuality - in the name of religion, social order, decency, etc. - that certainly equalled, and in its scale probably outstripped, anything that happens in Arab countries today.

Brian Whitaker

#86. I don't want to pay good money to hear ordinary people's lunatic views. Most of the people who phone in are [lunatics] - certainly in Britain.

John Gimlette

#87. We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings.

George Galloway

#88. On this day I remember words that have stayed with me since my childhood and which matter a great deal to me today, my school motto: "I will try my outmost". This is my promise to all of the people of Britain and now let the work of change begin.

Gordon Brown

#89. The biggest opportunity in 2013 is in Africa. It has seven out of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world. In Nigeria alone there are 100 million people with mobile phones. In total, 300 million Africans - five times the population of Britain - are in the middle class.

David Miliband

#90. I know that I have been denounced as a traitor and I resent the accusation, as I conceive myself to have been guilty of no underhand or deceitful act against Britain, although I am also able to understand the resentment that my broadcasts have, in many quarters, aroused.

William Joyce

#91. It would actually be quite nice if the American ambassador in Britain could pay the [congestion] charge that everybody else is paying and not actually try and skive out of it like some chiselling little crook.

Ken Livingstone

#92. Destroy or take away the employment and wages of those artisans - which the corn laws in a great measure do - and you will, ere long, render the land in Great Britain of as little value as it is in other countries.

Joseph Hume

#93. Winter regularly takes many more lives than any heat wave: 25,000 to 50,000 each year die in Britain from excess cold. Across Europe, there are six times more cold-related deaths than heat-related deaths ... by 2050 ... Warmer temperatures will save 1.4 million lives each year.

Bjorn Lomborg

#94. Fox hunting, there's big fox hunting thing, there's arguments in Britain about fox hunting. And they go around. They obviously hunt foxes because the foxes, they attack chickens. And posh people have an alliance with chickens just like in the First World War.

Eddie Izzard

#95. Women's sexy underwear is a minor but significant growth industry of late-twentieth-century Britain in the twilight of capitalism.

Angela Carter

#96. We can find common qualities and common values that have made Britain the country it is. Our belief in tolerance and liberty which shines through British history. Our commitment to fairness, fair play and civic duty.

Gordon Brown

#97. Calling into question the Touquet deal on the pretext that Britain has voted for Brexit and will have to start negotiations to leave the union doesn't make sense.

Francois Hollande

#98. It is not in the power of Britain or of Europe to conquer America, if she do not conquer herself by DELAY and TIMIDITY.

Thomas Paine

#99. I couldn't walk down any street in Britain without being laughed at. It was a nightmare. My children were devastated because their dad was a figure of ridicule.

David Icke

#100. After a war of about 40 years, undertaken by the most stupid [Claudius], maintained by the most dissolute [Nero], and terminated by the most timid [Domitian] of all the emperors, the far greater part of the island [of Britain] submitted to the Roman yoke.

Edward Gibbon