Top 100 Ustinov Quotes
#1. It was the sort of situation that would be ever so charming and warmly human in a film with Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith but that sort of film is only charming because they leave out so many details, and real life is all the details they leave out.
Russell Hoban
#2. Peter Ustinov was the first really positive influence in my career. He was real and he bore witness to it. The things he said to you, he lived them.
Terence Stamp
#3. The first proper mystery novel that I read was 'Murder On the Orient Express' with a gaunt David Niven and a cherubic Peter Ustinov on the cover. 'Orient Express,' you'll recall, is the one where everyone did it, which delighted me no end, and I was immediately hooked.
Adrian McKinty
#4. I've always been a secret locked-room fanatic. I read my first one when I was about ten or 11, Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express,' with David Niven and Peter Ustinov on the cover.
Adrian McKinty
#5. Better we see them seeing us, because then we can all see together, but when not seeing them seeing us we might not see them seeing us doing what we are doing. MI5 agent Iona von Ustinov (father of actor Peter Ustinov) to MI6 agent Desmond Bristow about the PDVE (Portuguese Secret Police) in 1944.
Desmond Bristow
#6. Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.
Peter Ustinov
#7. The point of living and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come
Peter Ustinov
#8. Life is unfair but remember sometimes it is unfair in your favour.
Peter Ustinov
#9. Life was cheap in the Middle Ages. It has become cheaper since. It is only in specific battles for specific lives that our culture is put to the test, and with it our humanity.
Peter Ustinov
#10. The great thing about history is that it is adaptable.
Peter Ustinov
#11. Basically I'm a very serious person, but I think the form it takes with me is comedy. I see the amusing side of all potentially pompous situations.
Peter Ustinov
#12. I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilized music in the world.
Peter Ustinov
#13. I am just a man, not fit to do the work of God ... or the Devil.
Peter Ustinov
#14. I have four children which is not bad considering I'm not a Catholic.
Peter Ustinov
#15. To live like a poor man is only fun when you are rich.
Peter Ustinov
#16. Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
Peter Ustinov
#17. Artificial glamor-false eyelashes, that sort of thing-usually is put on to hide a vacuum. The most beautiful face can only look vacuous if it masks an empty head.
Peter Ustinov
#18. Sometimes I wish I could just fall in love. Then, at least you know who your opponent is.
Peter Ustinov
#19. It's wrong to flog a man. It's against his being a man.
Peter Ustinov
#20. Unfortunately, a superabundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares
Peter Ustinov
#21. Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.
Peter Ustinov
#22. I am an international citizen conceived in Russia, born in England, working in Hollywood, living in Switzerland, and touring the World.
Peter Ustinov
#23. Monica Seles: I'd hate to be next door to her on her wedding night.
Peter Ustinov
#24. In my day, there were things that were done, and things that were not done, and there was even a way of doing things that were not done.
Peter Ustinov
#25. I'm Rally of Unionist Separist Extremes, sometimes known as the R.U.S.E. ... It's the party at present in power.
Peter Ustinov
#26. Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.
Peter Ustinov
#27. Frankly, we doubt the veracity and seriousness of the United States in regard to achieving results that would be acceptable to both sides in Geneva.
Dmitriy Ustinov
#28. Love is an act of endless forgiveness; a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustinov
#31. I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
Peter Ustinov
#32. If history teaches us one thing, than that history teaches us nothing.
Peter Ustinov
#33. I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.
Peter Ustinov
#34. Did you know that the worldwide food shortage that threatens up to five hundred million children could be alleviated at the cost of only one day, only one day, of modern warfare.
Peter Ustinov
#35. At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.
Peter Ustinov
#36. Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.
Peter Ustinov
#38. Flogging. The only solution to every problem. I warrant even the culprit himself doesn't know! It was just - his turn!
Peter Ustinov
#39. The stupidity of a stupid man is exercised in a restricted field; the stupidity of an intelligent man has a much wider diffusion, and a far greater effect, aided as it is by the element of surprise.
Peter Ustinov
#40. American democracy is the inalienable right to sit on your front porch, in your pyjamas, drinking a can of beer and shouting out 'Where else is this possible?' Which doesn't seem to me to be freedom, really.
Peter Ustinov
#41. To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
Peter Ustinov
#42. People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.
Peter Ustinov
#43. World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable; and when it comes, it will appeal to patriotism in its truest sense,in its only sense, the patriotism of humans who love their national heritages so deeply that they wish to preserve them in safety for the common good.
Peter Ustinov
#44. The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.
Peter Ustinov
#45. As I grow older I find that though I think I'm saying the same things as I always did, people listen to me more.
Peter Ustinov
#46. I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins.
Peter Ustinov
#47. It is our responsibilities not ourselves that we should take seriously.
Peter Ustinov
#48. Robert Vavra is one of these artists, part magician, part alchemist, who is able to create a series of photographs in unforgettable compositions. Only visible are the dunes, the blinding fields of flowers and the vast sky, the epic intimacy of Robert Vavra's vision.
Peter Ustinov
#49. I hate being moved. I hate that man who came in. So self-righteous, so cruel. He made fun of me, that's why I cried. You never did that. You led me into temptation by your - politeness.
Peter Ustinov
#50. Toronto is a kind of New York operated by the Swiss.
Peter Ustinov
#51. Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.
Peter Ustinov
#52. Generals are fascinating cases of arrested development - after all, at five all of us wanted to be generals.
Peter Ustinov
#53. I had started by imitating a parrot, which is unusual, in that a parrot is supposed to imitate you. By taking the initiative you allow the parrot no alternative but to be itself, which proves again that attack is often the best defence.
Peter Ustinov
#54. When I was small, I would refuse to drink when I ate fish because I thought the fish would reconstitute itself in my stomach
Peter Ustinov
#55. Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.
Peter Ustinov
#56. The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.
Peter Ustinov
#57. I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.
Peter Ustinov
#58. I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know what a sad place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.
Peter Ustinov
#59. The stupidity of a stupid man is mercifully intimate and reticient, while the stupidity of an intellectual is cried from the rooftops.
Peter Ustinov
#60. The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.
Peter Ustinov
#61. If you're going to be a prisoner of your own mind, the least you can do is make sure it's well furnished.
Peter Ustinov
#62. The French and the British are such good enemies that they can't resist being friends.
Peter Ustinov
#63. Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.
Peter Ustinov
#64. The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us
Peter Ustinov
#65. Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.
Peter Ustinov
#66. We used to have lots of questions to which there were no answers. Now, with the computer, there are lots of answers to which we haven't thought up questions.
Peter Ustinov
#67. This is a free country, madam. We have a right to share your privacy in a public place.
Peter Ustinov
#68. Acting on television is like being asked by the captain to entertain the passengers while the ship goes down.
Peter Ustinov
#69. People are annoyed with the Chinese for not respecting more human rights. But with a population that size it's very difficult to have the same attitude to human rights.
Peter Ustinov
#70. I think that first nights should come near the end of a play's run-as indeed, they often do.
Peter Ustinov
#71. Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, it is our duty to furnish it well.
Peter Ustinov
#72. In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
Peter Ustinov
#73. Irrespective of nationality, soldiers are always open to the same discomfort and to the same comradeship the world over. I'll make things easy for you if you make things easy for me. That is, after all the unwritten law of the barracks.
Peter Ustinov
#74. And here is the lesson I learned in the army. If you want to do a thing badly, you have to work at it as though you want to do it well.
Peter Ustinov
#75. British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive it. If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.
Peter Ustinov
#76. There are experts in little things but there are no experts in big things. There are experts in this fact and that fact but there are no moral experts.
Peter Ustinov
#77. By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.
Peter Ustinov
#78. What is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn?
Peter Ustinov
#79. That weakness in human nature which goes by the name of strength.
Peter Ustinov
#80. The young need old men. They need men who are not ashamed of age, not pathetic imitations of themselves ... Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.
Peter Ustinov
#82. Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.
Peter Ustinov
#83. It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon.
Peter Ustinov
#84. If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.
Peter Ustinov
#85. Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.
Peter Ustinov
#86. To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness.
Peter Ustinov
#87. Men think about women. Women think about what men think about them.
Peter Ustinov
#88. Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
Peter Ustinov
#89. The older I get, the more people listen to me - even though I say the same as always ...
Peter Ustinov
#90. Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much.
Peter Ustinov
#91. If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
Peter Ustinov
#92. I can never forgive God for having invented the French
Peter Ustinov
#93. Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.
Peter Ustinov
#94. At my age, I'm often asked if I'm frightened of death and my reply is always, I can't remember being frightened of birth.
Peter Ustinov
#95. I don't know why I have these dreams. I've never wanted to be Pope. In fact, I have a greater affinity to Martin Luther.
Peter Ustinov
#96. Did you know that every two hours the nations of this world spend as much on armaments as they spend on the children of this world every year?
Peter Ustinov
#97. Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique.
Peter Ustinov
#99. Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.
Peter Ustinov
#100. Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Peter Ustinov
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