Top 100 Quotes About British
#1. The British invasion certainly made a lot of noise in the record industry.
Jeff Barry
#2. 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
#3. If there's one thing above all that sets me apart from Tony Blair it is this - I am not embarrassed to articulate the instincts of the British people.
William Hague
#4. Strange it was that the British commander-in-chief, known for his chronic gambling, seemed to give no thought to how his American opponent might play his hand. O
David McCullough
#5. Although I'm living in California, I'm very proud to be British.
Rod Stewart
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. The British have been particularly shy about the issues of financial regulation, and attentive only to the interests of the City - hence their reluctance to see the introduction of a tax on financial transactions and tax harmonisation in Europe.
Francois Hollande
#9. Everyone knows that the Zionist regime is a tool in the hands of the United States and British governments.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
#10. 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
#11. Oh, come on. You eye-hump him all through British History.
Cynthia Hand
#12. Snooker has just been a British-based sport for such a long time and when I started at 18 the furthest you'd go would be London.
John Higgins
#13. In case anyone in America had missed the utter helplessness of their government, 4,000 British troops captured and burned Washington DC. The Presidential mansion, where the decision for war had been taken, was one of the public buildings to be torched.
Andrew D. Lambert
#14. It's weathered many a storm, but the British film industry is, thankfully, still afloat.
Peter Capaldi
#15. Before Cliff (Richard) and The Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music.
John Lennon
#16. Those who mourned needed to find meaning in their loss. When the British struck their Victory Medal for issue to all those who had served, they provided one answer: 'For Civilisation', it said.
Anonymous
#17. If the British are a nation of shopkeepers, Americans are a nation of shoppers.
Ada Louise Huxtable
#18. Primary responsibility for Brexit lies with British conservatives, who took an entire continent hostage.
Martin Schulz
#19. Even though the Olympics take place during Ramadan, some Muslim athletes said they will not fast during games. Then, after sampling the British food, they said, on second thought, fasting sounds good.
Conan O'Brien
#20. But a show of force by the mightiest nation on earth isn't going to do anything except convince them that their attitudes are worth holding on to. Soon they'll be martyrs and world opinion will think the British Empire nothing but a big bully too fond of waving the big stick.
Susan Howatch
#21. 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
#22. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of colonial people ruled by the British monarch plunged from 700 million to five million. In 1956, just three years after the coronation, the Suez canal crisis and Anthony Eden's humiliation ended all notions that Britain was a world superpower.
Kate Williams
#23. My father was a headmaster in England and then the dean of a college in Australia. We moved there when I was about five, so my education was in Australia, and I always felt I was Australian even though my passport was British.
Olivia Newton-John
#24. 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
#25. According to a British poll, you've only got a one in five chance of achieving your childhood career ambition. Which probably explains why you don't run into that many cowboys, princesses, or space rangers.
Jay Leno
#26. When I get asked about novelists I like, they tend to be white, male, and British, like Graham Greene. They write the kind of declarative sentences I like. I don't like to be deflected by acrobatics.
Alan Furst
#27. 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
#28. My motto is "Unite now, today if you can; fight if you must. But in every case avoid British intervention."
Mahatma Gandhi
#29. I think British audiences are accustomed to the 'boo' factor and pantomimes.
Nigel Lythgoe
#30. 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
#31. We can safely make one prophecy: whatever the outcome of this war, the British Empire is at an end. It has been mortally wounded. The future of the British people is to die of hunger and tuberculosis in their cursed island. (4th February 1945)
Adolf Hitler
#32. British Airways: No one is actually going to save the environment, so you might as well enjoy it while it lasts.
David Mitchell
#33. The British press are a group of unremitting scumbags. And sometimes they use that scumbaggery to good ends, and often not.
John Oliver
#34. It is a standing source of astonishment and amusement to visitors that the British Museum has so few British things in it: that it is a museum about the world as seen from Britain rather than a history focused on these islands.
Neil MacGregor
#35. I like the constant rise and fall of the British film industry. But above all, I like the workhorses who kept going no matter what.
Peter Capaldi
#36. It is a fallacy to believe that a Republic of any kind can be won through the shackled Free State. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The Free State is British created and serves British Imperialist interests. It is the buffer erected between British Capitalism and the Irish Republic.
Liam Mellows
#37. Israel was born under the British mandate. We learned from the British what democracy means, and how it behaves in a time of danger, war and terror. We thank Britain for introducing freedom and respect of human rights both in normal and demanding circumstances.
Shimon Peres
#38. Growing up as a kid my father was British and a soccer player. His idol was a guy that passed the ball a lot, Stanley Matthews. Our family thought if you could be unselfish your teammates would always like you.
Adam Oates
#39. British fashion is self confident and fearless. It refuses to bow to commerce, thus generating a constant flow of new ideas whilst drawing in British heritage.
Alexander McQueen
#40. I'm not really into method acting - the way I was taught was the good old-fashioned British way of just doing your research and getting on with it.
Laura Donnelly
#41. There is no more striking illustration of the immobility of British institutions than the House of Commons. Herbert
H. H. Asquith
#42. 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
#43. The average British woman is a size 12 to 14, but in modelling, a size 12 is considered huge, which is ridiculous.
Marie Helvin
#44. 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
#45. Barbara Castle was a hero to millions of British women. She inspired a new generation of women to become active in Labour politics, including, of course Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman.
Patricia Hewitt
#46. And I maintain, Detective Halse," said Inspector Fry doggedly, "that the civil unrest which allowing this message to remain in view would foment is against the principles of conscience and of British decency. Are you against the principles of British decency, Detective?
Lyndsay Faye
#47. I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilization, and I would not have her (Britain) say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions.
Francis Ledwidge
#48. In that flash of ecstasy she suddenly knew what all poetry, all music, all sculpture, except things like winged Assyrian Bulls, or the very broken pieces in the British museum, meant.
Angela Thirkell
#49. In 1973 we moved to the British Isle of Man, and I put my first band together for one year, named Melody Fair.
Andy Gibb
#50. It is no exaggeration to say that Israeli policy in the occupied territories is not simply a matter of foreign policy - it is a matter for British domestic security policy too,.
John Denham
#51. I loved history, particularly of the British, American and Old Testament kind.
Luke Ford
#52. [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
#53. A cynic once told G. K. Chesterton, the British novelist and essayist, "Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed." Chesterton's rejoinder? "Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.
Benjamin Graham
#54. It is good to see women doctors and lawyers and executives. I can visualize a woman president. If I were British, I would have supported Margaret Thatcher. But no benefit to anyone can come from women serving in combat.
Jim Webb
#56. I'm a little bit like a turducken: I'm sort of like an Indian person, wrapped in a British person, wrapped in an American kind of thing.
Aasif Mandvi
#57. Canon gives orders that no more prayers are to be offered up for the British government.
Charles Kaiser
#58. India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before.
Mahatma Gandhi
#59. What's amazing is that I'm recognized all over the world through 'Red Dwarf.' British fans are exceptional, but the American fans are something else. Some of them fly 500 miles to stand in line for three hours, just to meet me, then when they do they collapse. It makes you feel like a rock star!
Craig Charles
#60. When you are lying drunk at the airport you're Irish. When you win an Oscar you're British.
Brenda Fricker
#61. I fear that the rising personal bankruptcies and repossessions are the first signs of bigger problems to come and personal debt - Gordon Brown's legacy to millions of Britain's families - will hang like a millstone around the neck of the British people for years to come.
Vince Cable
#62. [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
#63. 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
#64. The British state already invests in early intervention campaigns in drug abuse and sexual health. Challenging extremism should be no less of a priority.
Maajid Nawaz
#65. 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
#66. I don't think the Bonzo Dog could have evolved in America, nor could the old Nice: because of their musical discipline. This is one thing that British groups do have, a sort of discipline. Sometimes it can get a bit soulless, but on the whole I think it's preferable to the American alternative.
Jon Lord
#67. Q. Why don't they work harder?
A. They just don't like hard work. The Germans have a reputation for hard work, so they like to keep it up. The British find it boring.
George Mikes
#68. The British are weak in numbers, we are weak in spite of our numbers.
Mahatma Gandhi
#70. How much it is to be regretted, that the British ladies should ever sit down contented to polish, when they are able to reform; to entertain, when they might instruct; and to dazzle for an hour, when they are candidates for eternity!
Hannah More
#71. I've always criticised American policy when I've disagreed with it. Just as I've criticised British policy. I was violently anti-Suez and pro-American in 1956, just as I was violently anti-Soviet on the invasion of Hungary which took place at the same time.
Denis Healey
#72. I know the British press is very attached to the lobby system. It lets the journalists and the politicians feel proud of their traditional freedoms while giving the reader as much of the truth as they think is good for him.
Tom Stoppard
#73. I loved the MC5 and the Stooges, but also, the British Invasion - the Kinks and the Yardbirds - and then Led Zeppelin, of course. Alice Cooper was one of my favorite bands.
John Varvatos
#74. 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
#75. We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
#76. I think Bond the character is distinct: He's British, he has a certain code that he lives by, he's incorruptible ... he's a classical hero, but he's also fallible. He has inner demons, inner conflicts, and he's a romantic.
Barbara Broccoli
#77. Think for a moment: what is the British equivalent of the U.S. Fourth of July, or even the French 14th of July for that matter?
Gordon Brown
#78. The British welfare state, it seemed, had removed the incentives without which a capitalist economy simply could not function: the carrot of serious money for those who strove, the stick of hardship for those who slacked.
Niall Ferguson
#79. Could you look again, please?" the woman asked in a clipped, slightly British accent. "It was sent parcel post two weeks ago from Miss Felicity Worthington and addressed to Mrs. Rao, Mrs. Gemma Doyle Rao.
Libba Bray
#80. I have won the Australian, I won the British, all PGA championships, but I haven't won the PGA championship.
Arnold Palmer
#81. The British scholar Avner Offer calls attention "the universal currency of well-being." Attentive people, in other words, are happy people. Tashi
Eric Weiner
#82. The legendary missionary journey of St. Paul, which led to the foundation of the British church, presupposes the existence of a Jewish community - always the initial object of his propaganda - even before the capture of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70.
Cecil Roth
#83. I'm so patriotic, I think every British kid should have a chance to grow up to be our head of state.
Johann Hari
#84. It could be my British need for discipline that makes me admire the American appetite for freedom and passion.
Steve Winwood
#85. Politicians.Their first thoughts are always with the loved ones of the British serviceman tragically killed in action.
And whether they'll vote New Labour at the next election.
There's no need to be cynical, Susan.
Why not?
You've got me there.
William Donaldson
#86. Ineptitude and negligence directed British policies in India more than any cynical desire to divide and rule, but the British were not above exploiting rivalries.
Pankaj Mishra
#87. It has been argued that British girls are incapable of deep feeling or brilliant acting owing to their lack of temperament. This, I am positive, is not true.
Ivor Novello
#88. An enormous semiofficial drug-smuggling operation was established in order to improve Britain's unfavorable balance of payments with China - the direct result of the British love of tea.
Tom Standage
#89. Thank you to everybody who voted for me, and to the British public for their encouragement over the last 17 years
Christopher Eccleston
#90. We have a large underclass in Britain, and a fairly low standard of education. Our best universities are extremely good, but a very significant proportion of the British population that comes out of compulsory schooling with very low standards of education.
Nigel Short
#91. [T]he only luxury he allows himself is buying books, paperback books, mostly novels, American novels, British novels, foreign novels in translation, but in the end books are not luxuries so much as necessities, and reading is an addiction he has no wish to be cured of.
Paul Auster
#92. I once bought an old car back after I sold it because I missed it so much and I had forgotten that it never ran. It was a British racing car. You know, because I just wanted it back. I could only remember what was good about it.
Connie Chung
#93. Yes, well, rein it in, Prom King. British people have been successfully repressing our emotions since before your country was even a thing." We
Holly Bourne
#94. 'MaerskKendal' is a rarity with its British flag, the 'LONDON' home port painted on its bow, its two British chief officers, and its portrait of the queen in the mess room, apparently common courtesy on British ships, but a little alarming to me.
Rose George
#95. The British have given me good support for the last 8 years and have always believed in me.
Jonathan Brown
#96. That was the year the British decided to get out and sell everything. So I immediately held an election. I knew the people will be dead scared. And I won my bet big-time. The gullible fools!
Lee Kuan Yew
#97. Thwarted by the British and French on the world stage, Berlin decided in 1913 to concentrate Germany's military objectives in Europe. That year Germany grew into a singularly dangerous continental presence: besieged, paranoid and armed to the teeth.
Paul Ham
#98. In my view the European culture carries a very heavy responsibility for the creation of Israel ... it is a product of both British and Stalin's anti- Semitism, but the British never faced their own complicity in its construction.
Tom Paulin
#99. I'm just an enormous British comedy fan.
Paul Feig
#100. 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
