Top 100 Very British Sayings
#1. It always interested me that 'Goodness Gracious Me' and 'The Kumars,' when shown around the world, were referred to as British comedy. It was only here that they were referred to as Asian comedy, even though I always felt it was very British in its humour and structure.
Sanjeev Bhaskar
#2. Growing up in Jamaica, the Pentecostal church wasn't that fiery thing you might think. It was very British, very proper. Hymns. No dancing. Very quiet. Very fundamental.
Grace Jones
#3. Will was very British and on his way to very drunk.
Ramez Naam
#4. It's very British to go about to see something unusual and paint it.
David Hockney
#5. Even though I have lived in the States since I was 18, in my head I am still very British, and I do have this romance for towns in Middle America that nobody gets to see.
Karen Elson
#6. My husband doesn't know what my songs are about - even when they're about him. He's very British in that way. He doesn't ask, and he doesn't want to be told.
Tori Amos
#7. Now undoubtedly, we face some very British challenges when it comes to infrastructure. We rightly cherish our back yards and green spaces, and we'll defend them passionately when projects are announced. We live in a democracy, and we like to debate these things, often for many years.
Evan Davis
#8. My accent has changed my whole life. When I was younger, it was very Nigerian, then when we went to England, it was very British. I think I have a very strange, hybrid accent, and I've worked very hard to get a solid American accent, which is what I use most of the time.
Toks Olagundoye
#9. Fun, that's the word I keep on using. That's the word I worry about when other writer's scripts get too dark. Optimistic. Fun. And to be optimistic and have fun there's got to be a darkness there. I think that's a very British attitude.
Russell T. Davies
#10. Chav-bashing draws on a long, ignoble tradition of class hatred. But it cannot be understood without looking at more recent events. Above all, it is the bastard child of a very British class war.
Owen Jones
#11. If I am pushed I will push back, that is the way I am. I am very British. We don't like to be pushed around. When the chips are down we might have to step into grey areas.
Damon Hill
#12. And I definitely do that very British thing of, take things with a pinch of salt, stiff upper lip, you know what I mean?
Jessie J.
#13. If I go anywhere where there are people who vaguely look like me, there is always that feeling of, 'Actually I do look quite similar to everyone else.' At moments like that, I become very, very British. My accent gets more clipped, and I stride around as if I've got an empire.
Sanjeev Bhaskar
#14. The British Labour Party has always had a very strong "Atlanticist component," with an obsequiousness to American policies, and Blair represents this wing. He's clearly obsessed with Iraq. He has to be because the overwhelming majority of the people of Britain oppose a military action.
John Pilger
#15. I think British humour is very cruel, and gay humour is very cruel. I think the two go hand-in-hand and that's why they mix so well in England. I think that's why you get so many gay comedians in England that are accepted so well because British humour is very cruel. I love it.
Jason Sellards
#16. I was raised by maternal grandparents who were born in 1890 and 1899, respectively. They were British subjects; George V was the cousin of the tsar. The Romanovs were very real in their household.
Kathryn Harrison
#17. The British audience was very important to me. I have always looked away from American to non-American audiences and so this was important.
Robert Sheckley
#18. 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
#19. In the British military system, there is a very strict chain of command. Americans just want to win, and the correct strategy may be to speak directly to the men.
Scott Raab
#20. When I first did a U.S. pilot season, there were very few British actors schlepping around town trying to get into television. That was 1999.
Jamie Bamber
#21. They're very harsh people, the British: hard to impress, very tough on each other, but I rather like that. It's not that the British are more honest - you're just under no illusion with them.
Hugh Laurie
#22. I would say we are a friend in need and I am sure that the Greek people would very much welcome the choice of the British people to come and enjoy Greece, first of all, but also that would be a sign of support.
George Papandreou
#23. I have flown with British Airways since I was a very little child, so it feels quite special to have gone from family holidays flying around Europe to become a gold card holder and be spoiled enough to travel more than not in first class.
Orlando Bloom
#24. But you know we couldn't compare what we do with what the British athletes did at the Olympics. We are very proud to be British and if we have done our bit to promote Britain in a historic year for the country that's brilliant.
Louis Tomlinson
#25. That's one of the good things about a lot of the young British bands, they are mixing all styles of music. I think that's very good because that's very modern.
Mick Jagger
#26. Let's as this House send a very clear message to British Muslims that we value you, we value your contribution, and we will take this petition very seriously.
Sarah Wollaston
#27. I have managed to infuriate the bank bosses; acquire a fatwa from the revolutionary guards of the trades union movement; frighten the 'Daily Telegraph' with a progressive graduate payment; and upset very rich people who are trying to dodge British taxes. I must be doing something right.
Vince Cable
#28. 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
#29. The hard left is a very small section of the British population and I myself am not hard left. I am a traditional Labour left-winger.
George Galloway
#30. 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
#31. The drive to scale in almost every endeavor. The British went very large scale in ship building and a few other industries. Their steel plants were bigger and much more advanced than ours after the Civil War, but we had blown past them by the mid-80s.
Charles R. Morris
#32. I came to Los Angeles and did auditions for television. I made a terrible mess of most of them and I was quite intimidated. I felt very embarrassed and went back to London. I got British television jobs intermittently between the ages of 23 and 27, but it was very patchy.
Michael Fassbender
#33. British ferries have stopped transporting live animals to the Continent. This has made it very difficult for England fans to get to Away matches.
Jo Brand
#34. I can see how Americans misconstrue British reserve, and I can see how British people misconstrue American enthusiasm. I think I'm somewhere in between the two. Although I'm outgoing, I'm also very private.
Julianne Moore
#35. Anyone that knows me knows what I'm about, and I'm very much a British actor, a European actor.
Robert Carlyle
#36. I spent quite a lot of time pissing off my friends because I could get girls with a British accent, despite the fact that I was tubby and, like, not very cool.
Marcus Mumford
#37. The British fans are very intense, maybe even more so than fans in the U.S.! They're great.
Austin Mahone
#38. 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
#39. America has had an influence on me, as has going out with a Cuban-American guy and having lots of American friends. But I am still fundamentally British and speak with a British accent and feel very English.
Lily Cole
#40. 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
#41. I think of part of myself as a very passionate person, but I don't think that comes across. I don't know where it comes from, that reserve or veneer of British niceness. But it doesn't bother me if other people don't spot the passion. I know it's there.
Julie Andrews
#42. Q. Why don't the British panic?
A. They do, but very quietly. It is impossible for the naked eye to tell their panic from their ecstasy.
George Mikes
#44. I'm quite British; I've got big, flat feet, and I can't wear heels. I've got very, very pale Celtic skin, so my legs are always a frightening blue color. So when you take out clothes that reveal your legs, shoes that have any kind of heel, no shop will actually take my money.
Caitlin Moran
#45. I'm not Tom Cruise. Very few British actors are. If you look at the body of work I've done it's pretty obvious I'm not going to make a 'Mission: Impossible.'
Jude Law
#46. The wrongful arrest of tens of thousands of British Muslims after the September 11 attacks can be explained by the very poor intelligence the police had, and, just possibly, excused by the fact that a terrorist action in Britain linked to British Muslims would have been hugely damaging.
Geoff Mulgan
#47. The British were indeed very far superior to the Americans in every respect necessary to military operations, except the revivified courage and resolution, the result of sudden success after despair.
Mercy Otis Warren
#48. If the deaf are to hear, the sound has to be very loud. When we dropped the bomb, it was not our intention to kill anybody. We have bombed the British Government. The British must quit India and make her free.
Bhagat Singh
#49. I've been proud to be national champion. I've really enjoyed it. I have very little opportunity to remind people that I'm British and it's a nice way of staying in touch. I'm going to defend it fiercely. I want to keep it.
David Millar
#50. I speak for all Malaysians in expressing my admiration for the Queen and the grace, poise and selflessness with which she has carried out her duties during her long reign. She represents the very best of British traits: dignity, resilience and hard work.
Najib Razak
#51. Most people in this country are very fair-minded; they understand we're in the middle of a very difficult journey of repairing, rescuing, restoring our British economy, and they want us, and they want particularly Liberal Democrats in government, to fight for the fairest possible way of doing that.
Nick Clegg
#52. For the first five years of my life, I grew up in a log cabin in coastal British Columbia in a very small town, like 300 people, mostly hippies. No running water, no electricity. When I was 12, I changed my name from Dharma to Stewart. At that age, you just want to be normal.
Stewart Butterfield
#53. I would love to play a British character one day. My accent wavers between Scottish and Irish very easily, though.
Chris Lilley
#54. British and American women have very different styles and a different way of living.
Carolina Herrera
#55. A lot of the reasons that I'm resistant to making films in the U.S. have nothing to do with not doing a film in Hollywood, but rather to do with what I'm committed to working on in the U.K. I feel very committed to the British film industry and infrastructure.
Mike Leigh
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. I am very proud to be British. I'm very conscious of carrying my country with me wherever I go. I feel I need to represent it well.
Julie Andrews
#59. The British Empire now stood at the very apex of modern civilization, and that it was the special burden of this empire to spread its enlightenment - whether through commerce, the Bible, the gun, or some combination of all three - to the world's less fortunate cultures and races.
Scott Anderson
#60. 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
#61. They're very keen on disillusioning young women at British universities, you know, I suppose to make us resigned and grateful later on.
Caleb Crain
#62. My father and I had a good relationship, it was very relaxed. He had a lot of humour. He looked a little bit like me, although he had no beard. He had the appearance of a very elegant British-looking man.
Michael Haneke
#63. Americans are a lot more open, of course. There's something more declamatory in the way you express emotions. It's a stereotype but it's true. British people can appear repressed in expressing emotions. Not very good at self-evaluating, or affirming situations, touching, anything like that.
Emily Blunt
#64. I couldn't speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British, and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I'm regarded as one of their own in Japan.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#65. I do consider myself British. I have very strong feelings about my British heritage.
Slash
#66. The British keep employing me, and that makes me like them. It also makes me think they're very intelligent.
John Cusack
#67. I have always felt an excellent rapport ever since my very first concert in Britain at Hampton Court. I have always felt understood. The British understand opera very well.
Andrea Bocelli
#68. It is very certain that the strong British race which has now overrun much of this continent, must also overrun [Texas], and Mexico and Oregon also, and it will in the course of ages be of small import by what particular occasions and methods it was done.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#69. 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
#70. British comedy - which has been a big inspiration to me for many years - is very different to Australian comedy and different again to American comedy.
Jason Gann
#71. At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.
Salman Rushdie
#72. It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.
Henry David Thoreau
#73. There was a brown substance inside and Chase had no doubt: it was heroin. Only a tiny amount, but very pure. - Cutting Right to the Chase Vol.2
Stefania Mattana
#74. British acting is undoubtedly based in text, and American acting relies more on behavior. That's speaking very generally.
Josh Dallas
#75. I agree with the British Legion that we have a responsibility to support our troops and support their families, particularly when we are asking people to do very difficult and dangerous things for our security.
Des Browne
#76. I think the British people are very, very attached to the idea that the health service is free at the point of use. But there is no reason why every doctor, nurse and teacher in this country has to be employed by the state.
George Osborne
#77. The British Government very naturally would like to see in India the form of democratic constitutions it knows best and thinks best, under which the Government of the country is entrusted to one or other political party in accordance with the turn of elections.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
#78. One thing I have been banging on about, we have a dessert deficit in the U.K. We still import a very large proportion of our desserts. I would ask everyone to go out and buy a British dessert.
Owen Paterson
#79. My mum is Croatian, and obviously she's female and she's very emotional, very hot-blooded, very touchy-feely, whereas I think my dad's quite British.
Tamara Ecclestone
#80. I'm very excited that my yelling will be featured on the next Evile disc; they're one of my favorite new-ish bands and, in my not-so-humble opinion, the British saviors of thrash metal.
Brian Posehn
#81. The rest of Europe tends to be very comfortable with sexuality. The British and the Americans are kind of hung up about it.
Steve Coogan
#82. I consider myself British and have very happy memories of the UK. I spent the first 14 years of my life in England and never wanted to leave. When I was in Australia I went back to England a lot.
Naomi Watts
#83. 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
#84. And so I was very grateful that I didn't do the British stiff upper lip, but I went straight to a therapist. And she was wonderful and helpful, and I went for about two years.
Lynn Redgrave
#85. The British bombing of Caen beginning on D-Day in particular was stupid, counter-productive and above all very close to a war crime.
Antony Beevor
#86. I got bored and then joined the British SAS. It was five very exciting years of my life, and then I'd always had this passion for swimming, so started swimming around the world, in some of the most exotic and distant and dangerous locations.
Lewis Pugh
#87. British humour is very cruel. It's my favourite kind of humour; if it isn't cruel and funny it doesn't really cut the cake for me.
Jason Sellards
#88. British crime stories tend to be very internal, psychological, claustrophobic, very limited in terms of geography.
Lee Child
#89. London exists normally in a state of bleach bypass. There's the artistic context of "Blow Up" and "Performance" and all the Sixties and Seventies British films that I grew up on, because I did very much grow up on British films.
William Monahan
#90. There is something about Prince William and Prince Harry that brings real modernity to the British royal family. They are also very open, human, and kind, and this is what I have tried to capture in the pictures I have taken of them as well as in my pictures of Prince William and Catherine.
Mario Testino
#91. this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more
Charles Dickens
#92. Because the whole British thing you have going on makes me want to do very wicked things to your mouth.
Christina Lauren
#93. The title, the name Frank, comes from this extraordinary British character Frank Friedbottom. He was very big in Britain in the '80s, but I, as an Irish kid, saw him on 'Top of the Charts.'
Lenny Abrahamson
#94. I knew I hadn't been the most innocent of victims, but I didn't deserve this. DC Smith stood and grinned at me as he thanked me and left the room, leaving me to cry and to ponder on his not very adept handling of the situation.
Stephen Richards
#95. Australians and the British are very similar: If you try and stand out in any way, and you try to reach for success, someone is gonna be there to cut you down.
Joel Edgerton
#96. Agatha Christie n. A silent, putrid fart committed by someone in this very room, and only one person knows whodunnit.
VIZ
#97. The British cinema had been very dull and conformist.
Karel Reisz
#98. I'm incredibly boring; I had a very happy childhood. I never starved, nor did I have a silver spoon in my mouth. I'm one of those terribly middle-of-the-road, British middle class, South London gents.
Jude Law
#99. The thing that runs through the British film industry even today is a lot of unsung movies are financially the bigger ones. Even though they weren't always the greatest of movies, something in them was very potent which people loved.
Peter Capaldi
#100. It was such an idyllic time when I grew up in Hong Kong. It was a British colony and very much geared towards buying the best of Britain. My childhood does have a huge influence on how we design. There must be a little bit of that nostalgia - childhood is so special.
Marie-Chantal Claire
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