British Quotes by Leslie Caron, Mikhail Gorbachev, Wallace Stevens, Adam Gopnik, Erin O’Connor, Dwight Garner and many others.
I seemed to belong to three countries: I had an apartment in Paris, a house in Hollywood, and when I married British theater director Peter Hall, I moved to London.
If people don’t like Marxism, they should blame the British Museum.
Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.
Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution – perhaps the first modern political institution.
The ‘Best of British’ is a positive thing that’s bandied around, but also it’s applied pressure to our country in terms of economic growth. I think we’ve always felt the rest of the world is so much more powerful in terms of being commercially viable, but we can take great pride in our level of creativity.
Mr. Jones’s book is a cleareyed examination of the British class system, and it poses this brutal question: ‘How has hatred of working-class people become so socially acceptable?’ His timely answers combine wit, left-wing politics and outrage.
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.
We need a new British business bank with a clean balance sheet and an ability to expand lending rapidly to the manufacturers, exporters and high-growth companies that power our economy. Today I can announce we will have one.
If you think about it, I made history. Not only was I the first black British woman to be nominated for an Oscar, I was the first black British person.
I do identify as a Muslim and I do identify as a Bangladeshi girl, I identify as British, as well, and a woman and I’m a woman of colour, and why am I ashamed of that? And I used to not want to talk about it. But that is me.
The British fans are very intense, maybe even more so than fans in the U.S.! They’re great.
Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines and sentiments of religious liberty… Let us hear the dignity of his [man’s] nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God… Let it be known, that British liberties are not the grants of princes or parliaments.
Let everyone leave all the guns – British guns and Irish guns – outside the door.
I give no more paroles to British officers.
There can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.
I’m a big fan of ‘The Office,’ both the British and the American versions.
The British invasion certainly made a lot of noise in the record industry.
There is certainly a higher percentage of wit in British comedy than in American comedy. What always tickles me is the way in which people try to use their intellect to get themselves out of tricky situations but never quite manage to do so – much to their enormous embarrassment.
I love punk, I love a lot of British Invasion bands, I love garage bands.
One should study the Bible alongside other intellectual traditions – such as British constitutionalism, Enlightenment liberalism, and classical republicanism – in order to truly understand the American founding.
You are part of our Great British family.
The Empire is a Commonwealth of nations.
Like the British constitution, cricket was not made: it has ‘grown’.
I was in Britain that year [1963] and some music publishing people in Denmark Street in London suggested me to the BBC. So I found myself in front of a British television show, which was a nice surprise.
No British Government ever will and ever can risk the bones of a British grenadier.
I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.
The monarchy is foremost a business, and it’s important to them that the British public continue to finance the excessive luxurious lifestyles of the now quite enormous, wasteful and useless ‘royal’ family.
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.
I’m British, so obviously I repress any powerful emotions of any kind in relation to anything.
It was part of your religion to hate the British.
It’s very hard to describe your own style. And I’m young, so I’m still experimenting. But I think it’s quite British and very much about individuality.
If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker; Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling salesman who can sell the world the Brooklyn Bridge every day, can put anything over on you and convince you that tomatoes grow at the South Pole.
It wasn’t just British gangster films that really did for me as a kid, personally, it was British films in general.
Straight out of Blackpool, I’m William Regal. My rhymes so intense, they shouldn’t be legal. My style is refined, not crude and crass. I’ll keep you grounded, like volcanic ash. I’ll take you down, rung by rung. I’m just like British Parliment; I’m completely hung. Straight-up gangsta trippin’. Yes, boy!
Of all noxious animals, the most noxious is a tourist. And of all tourists the most vulgar, ill-bred, offensive and loathsome is the British tourist.
There is as much need for a change of heart among the Hindus and Mussalmans as there is among the British, before a proper settlement is arrived at.
“Bolshoi Babylon” is the work of filmmakers Mark Franchetti and Nicholas Read. Franchetti has been a Moscow-based journalist for 18 years. He won a British Press Award for his coverage of the 2002 Moscow theater siege in which 130 hostages were killed. He’s covered Russian politics and the war in Ukraine.
We were really professional by the time we got to the States; we had learned the whole game. When we arrived here we knew how to handle the press; the British press were the toughest in the world and we could handle anything. We were all right.
By 1956, London Transport was recruiting in Barbados, even loaning migrants the costs of their passage to Britain. British Rail placed ads in the Barbados Labour Office and the NHS appealed to West Indian women to come to Britain and train to become nurses.
The United States can tell you all about what’s wrong with the British, to say nothing of the Russians.
Further, not only the United States, but the French, British, Germans and the United Nations all thought Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction before the United States intervened.
The British judiciary is one of the most corrupt in the world because of politically active judges.
The actors in Britain are incredible, and I didn’t appreciate that until I got there. They interpret your words and you realize how deliberate and thoughtful they are. There are great American actors, too, don’t get me wrong, but the technique that British actors have is something really special.
If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won’t hear an English accent. You’ll hear every accent under the sun apart from the British accent.
I have had and still do have every confidence in Paul Nitze, a man whom I have known for decades, one of the wisest servants of the American nation but always willing and capable of taking into account the interests of their allies, whoever: the British, or the French or the Germans or others.
I would like a UK fully engaged in Europe, but I can’t decide in place of the British. I see that for the moment they want to be more in retreat.
A lot of American actors when they do Shakespeare put on a phoney English accent and it drives me crazy. You’re always fighting against the idea that only the British know how to do Shakespeare.
King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.
‘It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,’ cried the Inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the British criminal law.
I wanted to be a great white hunter, a prospector for gold, or a slave trader. But then, when I was eight, my parents sent me to a boarding school in South Africa. It was the equivalent of a British public school with cold showers, beatings and rotten food. But what it also had was a library full of books.
A team of British lawyers has now concluded that the Declaration of Independence was illegal, and the American colonies had no right to secede from England. Well, you thought our court system was backed up.
And if there is one thing we can be sure of, it’s that extreme weather events like Superstorm Sandy, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and the British floods—disasters that, combined, pummeled coastlines beyond recognition, ravaged millions of homes, and killed many thousands—are going to keep coming.
How simple-minded of the Germans to imagine that we British could be cowed by the destruction of our ancient monuments! As though any havoc of the German bombs could possibly equal the things we have done ourselves!
[I like to cook] Shepherd’s pie, which is a classic British dish. But my version reflects my Jamaican roots, because I add jerk to it as well.
I really appreciate the British part of my family.
The art of British Columbia’s native Indians played a big role in inspiring my creativity… the simplicity of the images, the graciousness of the lines and curves, and the emotional impact of the bright simple primary colours.
And I definitely do that very British thing of, take things with a pinch of salt, stiff upper lip, you know what I mean?
However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbor, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in a war simply on her account. If we have to fight it must be on larger issues than that.
As a financial historian, I was quite isolated in Oxford – British historians are supposed to write about kings – so the quality of intellectual life in my field is much higher at Harvard. The students work harder there.
A Jew who converted, who simulated, was, at least in some periods, safe. Hitler in the beginning did not want to kill all the Jews but he wanted us to have a Germany free of Jews. If America had allowed Jews to come in, the British had accepted Jews from Palestine, they were safe.
I don’t know why British actors are getting big parts in American TV shows. Maybe it’s because we’re cheap.
My mother took me to the British Museum aged five. I had thought people from the past weren’t as good as we were, and then I saw the Elgin marbles. Suddenly, the world seemed more complicated.
If you watch cooking shows on cable, they have lots of British people. Because when you think good cooking, you immediately think Britain.
All men – whether they go by the name of Americans or Russians orВ Chinese or British or Malayans or Indians or Africans – haveВ obligations to one another that transcend their obligations to theirВ sovereign societies.
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!
I could have closed down bits of British Home Stores to make more money but it’s not my style. I want to make my money as a retailer, not by putting people out of work.
I was shocked by the amount of Welsh people in L.A. We’d go to this British pub to watch the ‘Six Nations’ early in the morning and I remember the first time I walked in it was just a sea of red.
I do not wish disaster to British arms.
When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask.
You can’t generalise about an entire country, but I like the energy of British men.
On the British Royal Divorce (Charles and Dianna). She is such a sad soul. It is good that it is over. Nobody was happy anyhow. I know I should preach family love and unity, but in their case. . . .
The shots that hit me are the last nails to the coffin of british rule in India.
British media supported Hillary. No problem with that. No interference. Nothing. French media supported Hillary. No problem with that. Some Russian media supported Trump: ‘Oh my God!’
Our Government is pleased to partner with the Kelowna Visual and Performing Arts Centre Society, located in the heart of British Columbia’s vibrant Central Okanagan region. Support for the performing arts is essential for the professional growth and development of our Canadian artists.
Ricky Gervais would have you believe otherwise, but Sacha Baron Cohen is the most successful British comedian in the world.
In various talk th’ instructive hours they past, Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last; One speaks the glory of the British queen, And one describes a charming Indian screen; A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes; At every word a reputation dies.
I mean, yeah, I’m sure that Python and the other things have paved the way for a greater understanding of the British sense of humor, but I don’t think it’s all that different than the American sense of humor.
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.
You know of our sympathetic interest in this country in Iran’s desire to control its natural resources. From this point of view we were happy to see that the British Government has on its part accepted the principle of nationalization.
Any criticism of Thatcher throws a dangerously absurd light on the entire machinery of British politics. Thatcher’s name must be protected, not because of all the wrong that she had done, but because the people around her allowed her to do it.
The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.
The Regulars are coming out!
British women can be slightly more reserved; Scottish are a little more crazy and fun, and American are more forthright, which I really enjoy.
British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question.
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.
The Americans are identical to the British in all respects except, of course, language.
As many as three million people are expected to attend the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. The security concerns and economic opportunities are great for both Canada and Washington state.
Red Bull are backing a spinal-injury research charity called Wings For Life, which I am an ambassador for, with a programme called Faces for Charity that will run at this year’s British Grand Prix.
The orgy of thieving in Iraq has more to do with the character of the people than the absence of restraining troops. And to think that good, decent, law-abiding young British and American men and women laid down their lives to liberate this thieving mob.
Dogmatic toleration is nonsense: I would no more tolerate the teaching of Calvinism to children if I had power to persecute it than the British Raj tolerated suttee in India. Every civilized authority must draw a line between the tolerable and the intolerable.
It’s celebrated in British culture to be eccentric.
I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, ’cause I’ve got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one… now a British one. I think it’d be pretty good to have an American phrase book.
I do consider myself British. I have very strong feelings about my British heritage.
The British Empire was so vast and so powerful, the sun would never set on it. This is how big it was, yet these 13 little scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire, liberty or death.
People say there’s no trace of an accent anymore, and there isn’t because I worked very hard to lose it. And the reason I did that is a British accent in America is a real status symbol.
With most British actors, it’s amazing. I think they start with the character on the outside and work in.
The young people working for me are ambitious and hard-working. That work ethic has always been a trait of the British.
The mistake British comedians often make is trying to beat the Americans at their own game – getting visiting American singers on their shows, talking about ‘sidewalk’ instead of ‘pavement,’ sitting on high stools in a white dinner jacket doing ballads. That way, you simply end up with a mid-Atlantic mishmash.
There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British.
It’s weathered many a storm, but the British film industry is, thankfully, still afloat.
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.
I considered the attacks on London useless, and I told the Fuhrer again and again that inasmuch as I knew the English people as well as I did my own people, I could never force them to their knees by attacking London. We might be able to subdue the Dutch people by such measures but not the British.
I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race… If there be a God, I think that what he would like me to do is paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible…
Julie Andrews has a wonderful British strength that makes you wonder why they lost India.
I think one of the great bits of The Muppet show is that it was set in a 19th century British theater and they live so nicely amongst that lovely old theater.
One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution has been an explosion of history. A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents, letters, diaries, grainy video, weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.
There are actually quite high profile British TV star cameos in it that you probably wouldn’t even notice, that the British wouldn’t even notice, let alone the American audience.
Theatre is relatively easy if you’re British – you’re living in the theatre capital of the world, London – there are so many places you can work, still. If I had begun to think of myself as a film actor, I think I would have got distracted.
… the reason is that a military defeat of Britain will bring about the disintegration of the British Empire. This would not be of any benefit to Germany.
I don’t think the United States has done anything whatsoever to merit any criticism by the British.
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!
One of the hardiest myths in British public life is that there is a conspiracy of silence on immigration. Liberals and leftists, it is alleged, have bandied together to prevent debate or discussion of ‘mass immigration’ into the U.K., caused by Labour’s ‘open door’ policies.
America is replicated at every level of British life, from the taxi driver to the prime minister.
There’s nothing worse than the British in one of their fits of morality.
I guess my guilty pleasure would be listening to the British audio versions of the ‘Harry Potter’ books.
Uncontrolled, mass immigration displaces British workers, forces people onto benefits, and suppresses wages for the low-paid.
We only need to wear shoes because the British built roads which hurt our feet.
India was formed on the idea ‘Let’s get the British out.’
Trade allegedly does not foster growth because when it begins, a flood of imports of factory origin destroys the handicraft manufacturing of the less developed country: the models for this are the effects of British exports of textiles and of iron in India and Chile in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Liberalism is a really old British tradition and it has a completely different attitude towards the individual and the relationship between the individual and the state than the collectivist response of Labour, and particularly Old Labour, does.
Ah, there’s nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization – this tea ritual and the detective novel.
Black Americans are the only people in history who are for education instead of liberation. George Washington wasn’t beating up on British for the right to open a college! The line isn’t “Give me education or give me death.”
Jimmy Greaves and Kenny Dalglish had similar know-how, but Dalglish’s knowledge and reading of the game was far superior. He was the most complete footballer in British soccer.
The story of the British empire helps to explain the roots of most British people: white, black, and Asian.
In recent years, perhaps encouraged by competition from McDonald’s, the British hamburger has become a credit to the nation. At the time of which I speak, it looked like a scorched beer-coaster or a tenderized disc brake.
It was the British rockers that saved me. They brought me to a different generation altogether [in the 60th]. The Who and The Yardbirds and Georgie Fame and Van Morrison and all those people. The only person who ever did my songs in [ U.S] country was Bonnie Raitt.
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is ‘The Book of British Birds,’ and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.
Pop managers are fixed in the dramatic stock character repertoire too, ever since the first British pop film musical, Wolf Mankowitz’s ‘Expresso Bongo’ of 1959, with Cliff Richard as Bongo Herbert and Laurence Harvey as his manager. The key components were cast as X parts gay, X parts Jewish and triple X opportunistic.
If you want something bad enough, you’ve got to make a bold move. George Washington, took on the British Empire. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Ken Titus taped a hotel key to his underwear to score with an airport security guard.
Suits are malevolent magicians’ sleeves for socialists, full of patrician loops and tricks, small, embroidered, cryptic messages of deference and privilege. They are ever the uniform of the enemy. They are also the greatest British invention ever.
I have a British passport, but the rest of my family have Indian passports, and I am Indian.
Science fiction has always been a means for political comment. H.G. Wells’ ‘The War of the Worlds’ wasn’t about a Martian invasion – it was a critique of British colonialism, and… ‘The Time Machine’ is really an indictment of the British class system.
American grammar doesn’t have the sturdiness of British grammar, but it has its own scruffy charm.
The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn’t work and you’re going to hit a brick wall at some point.
I was lucky that one of my first movies, ‘One Million Years B.C.’ was made in Europe by a British company. The Brits, and a lot of the rest of Europe, seemed to really love exotic women. The fact that I was American and exotic just made me more appealing to them.
I’m not as big a soccer fan as people might imagine, being British.
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.
I’m quite a fan of British designers.
At the British Open, I had my opportunities, but the ball just didn’t want to go in the hole on the back nine.
I turned down the OBE because its not a club you want to join when you look at the villains whove got it. Its all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.
It is unthinkable to have a British countryside that doesn’t have actual functioning farmers riding tractors, cows in fields, things like that.
Britons seem to have given up on assimilating their Muslim population, with many British elites patting themselves on the back for their tolerance and multiculturalism.
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.
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.
Vernon Bogdanor’s account The Monarchy and the Constitution is written as much in the shadow of Edmund Burke as it is of Walter Bagehot. He stresses the organic development of the British constitution, prefers evolution to revolution, and thinks stability is better than strife.
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.
When I was 13, listening to Choice FM, I would listen to a lot of R&B from America, and whenever a British person tried to do it, it didn’t really work, they just sounded like they were trying to copy that whole style. Now the music sounds British, something real rather than an imitation.
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.
It is up to you to decide that this has lasted long enough, that our boys are dying to serve no British interest but for the interests of a small clique of utterly unscrupulous men.
There are twenty-seven specific complaints against the British Crown set forth in the Declaration of Independence. To modern ears they still sound reasonable. They still sound reasonable, in large part, because so many of them can be leveled against the federal government of the United States.
You know, not even your British Queen is called just Elizabeth – she’s Elizabeth the Second. There’s only one Imelda.
I suppose I miss the British cynicism and the humor.
When the Canadian confederation took place in 1867, a lot of people in Quebec said, ‘Could we have a referendum?’ They said, ‘Oh, no. In the British tradition, the Parliament can do anything, excluding changing a man into a woman, and, therefore, no referendum’ – and that was that.
The most likely victim of actual religious discrimination in British society is a Muslim but the person who is most likely to feel slighted because of their religion is an evangelical Christian.
I’m a big fan of ‘The Office’, both the British and the American versions.
For all the worship that Ronald Reagan elicits in conservative circles in the United States, I would venture that Thatcher did far more to reshape British society than Reagan did here.
My skin still crawls if you call me a movie star. I get embarrassed. I think, don’t be ridiculous. Maybe it’s because I’m British. To me, Julia Roberts, that’s a movie star. But when people do call me one, that, I think, is an enormous compliment but, my God, is that a responsibility!
Such a prostitution of judicial power can never occur again under the shadow of the British law, for no jury within the wide circle of the empire would submit to such an infraction of their privilege, even if a judge could be found daring enough to attempt it.
The fact is, I’ve always felt more British than Irish. Maybe it was the way I was brought up, I don’t know, but I have always felt more of a connection with the U.K. than with Ireland.
We’ve seen the reality of Saddam’s regime: his thugs prepared to kill their own people, the parading of prisoners of war and now the release of those pictures of executed British soldiers.
The British people voted for change.They sent us a clear instruction that they want Britain to leave the European Union and end the supremacy of EU law.
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.
The American audiences are more vocal and enthusiastic. British audiences tend to sit back a little more.
The British system had requirements, including Latin. I’m not positive you ever had to know Greek, but there are certainly kinds of curricula where you had to know Greek too. I think in Britain there was the most mindless, repetitive sort of learning.
Catering on planes, like on British Rail, is a standing joke, but I don’t really have a problem with it. I don’t quite know what people expect.
I don’t enjoy British shows as a rule because British audiences are strange.
You can’t say British Columbia’s carbon tax is exactly the same as increasing hydroelectricity rates in another province. They’re very different mechanisms, but we shouldn’t deny that both of them can have an impact, and that’s why we’re talking about this broadly.
Unless nonviolence of the strong is really developed among us, there should be no thought of civil disobedience for Swaraj, whether within the states or in British India.
It came as a great shock to me when I heard that England and Soviet Russia had become allies. So much so that I thought that the people responsible in London were acting in a manner that no longer coincided with British imperial interests.
Traditional British desserts with lots of custard are my biggest weakness – I particularly love the puds at St. John restaurant in East London.
I may fight the British ruler, but I do not hate the English or their language. In fact, I appreciate their literary treasures.
I’m proud of being British, but I think our aristocracy is overrated.
The Queen of England gave me the honor of the Order of the British Empire for working with children.
We know that the British public are obsessed with class.
The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around 20,000 pounds. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child.
The British are so funny. It’s like they can’t believe I lived in Hackney. ‘You could live in Bondi Beach. Why would you want to live in ‘Ackney?’ But Hackney’s fantastic. I’m serious. There are so many artists there. I loved the markets, the parks, the pubs, the diversity. It was a cultural melting-pot.
I love the British.
It’s a phenomenon that I see with young actors – a lot of American speaking parts going to British actors.
It would be a blunder of the first magnitude for the British to be a party, in any way whatsoever, to the division of India.
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.
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.
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.
All the rich families who used to own all the British estates have gone bust because their children have blown their money.
I think you know that I classify science as British science, American science, and everybody else.
I never worked with a dialogue coach before, but I’d hate it if an American did a British accent and didn’t do it well. It would be insulting.
I have multiple identities. I’m British. I’m Pakistani. I’m a Muslim. I’m a writer. I’m a father. And each identity has rich overtones. So I must be careful to look at your identity, and that of others, in the same way.
The place was so British, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the mice wore monocles.
Well British pension funds have not been investing the savings of British people in British infrastructure.
Well, I’m British. I’m proud to be British and I love this country. I’m going nowhere.
I really wouldn’t want to live in America. I found New York claustrophobic and dirty. I missed England when I was there, simple things like smells and the British sense of humor.
Britain, today, educates 4.8 million primary school children in Britain. And we educate five million primary school children around the developing world, at a cost of 2.5 per cent of what we spend on British children.
In the Crusades, getting the Holy Land back was the goal, and any means could be used to achieve it. World War II was a crusade. The firebombing of Tokyo by Doolittle and the carpet bombing in Germany, especially by the British, showed that.
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.
Writing has been challenging at times but that’s where all the growth is. I know I’m in the right place if it’s difficult. Something a British writer said to me once was: “If the project doesn’t make him wobble, he doesn’t take it.” You have to be uncomfortable to grow.
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.
It could be my British need for discipline that makes me admire the American appetite for freedom and passion.
Obviously, Iron Maiden is on a way bigger scale to British Lion, but as a musician playing live, it’s just the adrenaline rush of playing in front of an audience that gives you that rush.
The United States may have retained more of the intellectual imprint of the British 18th century than Britain itself.
My jokes are in my head and I have a duplicate copy of my jokes in a lot of British comics’ heads, where they are safe.
My fathers a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.
Within two months I made the grand slam: covers of ‘American Vogue’, ‘Italian Vogue’, ‘British Vogue’, and ‘French Vogue’.
In India, as we saw, the Sepoy Mutiny led to a vast reorganization of British colonialism in the area, sending out a viceroy from London and before too long, Queen Victoria was proclaimed “Empress of India,” with this great empire, ruling over maharajahs and other local potentates.
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.
My youngest brother and I went on a ten-day canoe trip in Bowron Provincial Park in British Columbia years ago. Believe it or not, we took only granola, thinking we’d be eating a lot of lake trout. Well, we neglected to bring along a net, and our fishing line was only 8-lb. test.
The British Constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.
The spread of personal ownership is in harmony with the deepest instincts of the British people. Few changes have done more to create one nation.
I think the difference between me and some of the other YBAs [Young British Artists] was that I was ambitious for the work, and not ambitious for myself.
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.
I come from a political family. My father was a freedom fighter. He was a prominent leader of the locality and member of the Congress party. He spent 10 years in British prisons. In the evening, in our living room, the only subject we used to discuss was politics. So politics was not unfamiliar to me.
I don’t think the British carry a historical consciousness either.
I’ve never felt British. I’m just not interested in national identity. I don’t know why.
I’m a novelist from the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations of British Columbia, both small coastal reserves hugging the rugged shores of the west coast.
The British ministry can read that name without spectacles; let them double their reward.
The British people rejected politics as usual and government as usual. They want and need a new approach to running this country.
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.
What we learned quite early on is what was really important to early British pop that we produced-and this is where we were distinct from almost everybody else in this respect-is that it had to reflect exactly what the audience wanted us to say.
When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men in pitched battles in different places, and set up their administrations, the men surrendered. And it was the women who led the first revolt.
Before the Civil War, the Southern states were selling a lot of cotton to England and didn’t seem to mind British occupation. By and large, the Revolutionary War wasn’t at all great for business.
Not since the British raided Cologne had so many bombs landed in such a small space in such a short time.
What’s the difference between a bright, inquisitive five-year-old, and a dull, stupid nineteen-year-old? Fourteen years of the British educational system.
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.
The war in Iraq is still going on. The British are helping. Mexico wants to help, but they need a ride over there.
The British climate, although it is very wet, it is quite mild in winter. We don’t get these severe – generally don’t get severe winters.
I put it to you that there are no British poets, there are no British novelists. I have heard myself described as one, but I think really I’m an English novelist; there are Scottish poets and Scottish novelists.
Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.
The Dancing Girls of Lahore was offered to dozens of British publishers and was turned down by everyone. It is still on offer in the U.K., but I’m not confident there will be any takers.
I was one of those kids who thought I could be the president of England when I grew up if I wanted to. Then I started acting and realized life is hard and people are mean. And there’s no president of England and I’m not British.
I’m British – ostensibly British – but I don’t know where I really belong, you know?
Famines occur under a colonial administration, like the British Raj in India or for that matter in Ireland, or under military dictators in one country after another, like Somalia and Ethiopia, or in one-party states like the Soviet Union and China.
On Sunday, the president flies to the Azores islands to attend a summit with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar, and here’s my prediction: Bush gets voted off.
What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man … the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with political rights.
On the Northern Ireland question, for instance, the British and Irish governments prohibit media contact with members of the IRA, but we have always gone ahead, believing in the right to information.
Take all your dukes and marquesses and earls and viscounts, pack them into one chamber, call it the House of Lords to satisfy their pride and then strip it of all political power. It’s a solution so perfectly elegant and preposterous that only the British could have managed it.
The great theme of modern British history is the fate of freedom. The 18th century inherits, after the Civil War, this very peculiar political animal. It’s not a democracy, but it’s not a tyranny. It’s not like the rest of the world, the rest of Europe. There is a parliament, laws have to be made, elections are made.
Blair… is accusing us of executing British soldiers. We want to tell him that we have not executed anybody. They are either killed in battle, most of them get killed because they are cowards anyway, the rest they just get captured.
Yes here’s to the founding fathers – slave-owners, British citizens who didn’t want to pay taxes.
No British TV company could ever make a series like ‘The West Wing’ about British politics. It would beggar credibility. No one could write it with a straight face, or perform it without giggling.
It is plain and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankee, and operates differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton; ale must be drank in a fog and a drizzle.
There is no desire from the new British players. They say their coach doesn’t travel with them so it’s hard, but I played hundreds of players from Eastern Europe and Russia who had no facilities at all.
I’m a British intern going in. I’m hoping that John will just kind of tackle it from who this person is and what she’s about rather than trying to go in on her culture. We need to move a step forward than that.
That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
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?
We should lay aside every hindrance and endeavour by uniting the whole force and spirit of our people to raise again a great British nation standing up before all the world; for such a nation, rising in its ancient vigour, can even at this hour save civilization.
The British fans are liable to suddenly be talking to you about something that you don’t know how you got into the conversation. I think it’s something to do with the fact that they’ve been watching you for so many years sort of you telling your story.
I’m a guy who loves my family, and we’re probably only going to have a couple of more babies. I have the rest of my life to play the British Open.
The British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland.
Children’s publishing is the jewel in the crown of British publishing.
I think you will find scientists that think like you in Germany and Britain, and you will find politicians that think like Weinberger. I think the most bellicose ruling group in the Western world at the moment is the British.
If you come out of British TV, they’re kind of saying, “Here’s the keys to the kingdom. You are now going to go off and become a moviemaker. If you do really well, then the world is your oyster.
I’ve done my share of period stuff. I’m not sure why, but people say I have a period face. The bread and butter of British TV is Jane Austen adaptations and bridges and bonnets and boats and horses.
I am a subject of the British Crown, but whenever I have to choose between the interests of England and Canada it is manifest to me that the interests of my country are identical with those of the United States of America.
I went over before the British Open and played Valderrama thinking that I might make the team, might be a captain’s pick. I made the effort to go over there.
Yes, I won the Bafta. I thought the British were very intelligent.
A British villain never loses their sense of humour.
Ever since the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the Muslim world has been in slow decline relative to the west. With Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and the creeping British annexation of Muslim India, that decline took on a malign aspect.
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.
I think of myself as an Indian comedian, but I’ve had British and American schooling. I always had this feeling of not fitting in anywhere, of observing situations from the outside.
For fear of dropping the troops in the sea, the pilots tended to drop them too far inland – some of them actually in the British lines. The weapon containers often fell wide of the troops, which was another handicap that contributed to our excessive casualties.
I built up a knowledge of 1960s and ’70s British films because my dad used to work nights, and I’d sit up with my mum and watch films – ‘How I Won the War’ and the films of Richard Lester, Karel Reisz and John Schlesinger.
The British people know that, given strong leadership, time, and a little bit of hope, the forces of good ultimately rally and triumph over evil.
British chancellor is telling the rest of Europe it must abandon democracy. It’s appalling.
A collection that embraces the whole world allows you to consider the whole world. That is what an institution such as the British Museum is for.
Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn’t.
When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.
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.
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.
As an old creative industry full of cruelty and moral sense, British journalism once flourished on the imperative that people required the truth in order to survive. But people don’t require that now. They want sensation and they want it for nothing.
There is a romantic, often misguided, misconception among the British that life in France is akin to life in Paradise.
The British prime minister will want to have a strong and positive relationship with European leaders always.
I dont like Jews. Or colored folk. Or natives, now that you mention it…I bet you like Catholics. Cant stand them either. Nor women, Fabians, Socialists, homosexuals, Asians, or British.
My skin still crawls if you call me a movie star. I get embarrassed. I think, don’t be ridiculous. Maybe it’s because I’m British. To me, Julia Roberts that’s a movie star. But when people do call me one, that, I think, is an enormous compliment but, my God, is that a responsibility!
There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev. He had a wonderful influence
Possessed with a full confidence of the certain success which British valor must gain over such enemies, I have led you up these steep and dangerous rocks, only solicitous to show you the foe within your reach.
No ‘rules.’ What are you, British or something? I guess I’m too nice… No wonder people take advantage of me.
My dad’s family is part British and Austrian, and my mother’s family is from Goa, which is in the south of India. I looked different from everyone else, which now is such a blessing. It was harder at the beginning of my career.
Without history we are infants. Ask what binds the British Isles more closely to America than to Europe and only history gives a reply. Of all intellectual pursuits, history is the most supremely useful. That is why people crave it and need ever more of it.
I think there’s a quality of passion to the American actor. I’m certainly attracted to it, and I like to hope that underscoring it is a characteristic of my work. That quality is certainly also present in some British actors, but I tend to feel the mechanical and intellectual process is dominant in the British.
The will of the British people must now be put into effect as quickly as possible. Under Article 50 of the EU Treaty the UK must leave the European Union within two years at the latest.
When we first sold the Wallace and Gromit shorts to America, people suggested we get rid of the strange British accents and put clear American voices on them, and we held out.
I can’t always be making ‘British films.’ Why should we be making films about corsets and horses and girls learning to drive when Americans send over an event movie and make five or 10 million?
Intellectuals, academics, writers and poets were an important force in the early groups of volunteers. They had the means to get to Spain and were accustomed to travelling, whereas very few workers had left British shores.
I did projects on Champlain coming up the St. Lawrence River and on Henry Hudson cast adrift in the bay that now bears his name. And I read dozens of historical novels: Rosemary Sutcliff on Roman Britain and G. A. Henty on British heroes, though my all-time favourite was Ronald Welch’s ‘Knight Crusader.’
The British keep employing me, and that makes me like them. It also makes me think they’re very intelligent.
It is a real honour to have been modelling for Britain’s biggest paper for half a decade. Page Three is a British institution and it has been brilliant to be part of it.
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.
No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum.
We Americans only voted for George Bush to prove to the British that Americans understand irony. Unfortunately, it kinda backfired.
I’ve always liked country music. It’s a certain aspect of America that goes back to the British Isles and the influence is very native to America.
From infancy, I had been accustomed to hear pro and con discussions of slavery and the American Civil War. Although the British government finally decided not to recognise the Confederacy, public opinion in England was sharply divided on the questions both of slavery and of secession.
The British system denied any role for human creativity, and instead argued, that if man merely followed his hedonistic desires, pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, objective laws would naturally guide society to achieve the best allocation of wealth.
I was born in the ’60s and grew up in the ’70s – not exactly the best decade for food in British history. It was horrendous. It was a time when, as a nation, we excelled in art and music and acting and photography and fashion – all creative skills… all apart from cooking.
I mean, I think in the early days we were pretty… pretty British in our entertainment leads.
Although I don’t have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears.
By all means, let’s have free trade and no trade barriers and a common market. But where did it all suddenly become about our own economic and political destiny being surrendered to Brussels with agendas that arguably have very little to do with the interests of the British people and British voters?
The way to bring out the best in the British people is to attack them.
Margaret Thatcher had more impact on the world than any woman ruler since Catherine the Great of Russia. Not only did she turn around – decisively – the British economy in the 1980s, she also saw her methods copied in more than 50 countries.
We talk about the American way, the British way. If we had any sense, we would know that there is no American way, no British way. There is only one way – the scientific way that cuts across racial lines with international boundaries.
We must endeavor to forget our former love for them [the British] and to hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
The unions need to be taken on. British Airways is massively over-staffed and has got to get its costs down. . . . The problem for [chief executive] Willie Walsh is that the board of BA has no spine, no balls and no vision.
Churchill was a brilliant and inspiring rhetorician, but one of the first things he did as the head of the British nation was to put German Jews in jail. Tens of thousands of Jews – who had just been fortunate enough to get out from under Hitler only a few years before – spent the entire war in jail.
I’m in favour of more democracy – let the British public decide what the future of the monarchy is and what shape it should be.
I always feel like a bit of an outsider myself, but as a working class lad, the system was always against me. The British system itself and then of course all the illnesses that were challenging to me.
Is it possible that the environmental severity of the 1930s induced-particularly in the most aware, alert, and compassionate of [British] men-a morality which makes no sense today?
I am often accused of colluding with the British during the freedom struggle. I want to ask, how?
That I want to destroy British imperialism is another matter, but I want to do so by converting those who are associated with it.
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.
Right from the outset, the prevailing mindset in British comics fandom was a radical and progressive one. We were all proto-hippies, and we all thought that comics would be greatly improved if everything was a bit psychedelic like Jim Steranko.
As a black actress, all I was offered in British film was the best friend role, whereas in TV I was offered a whole spectrum of parts.
When I was a very young kid, the first music that really turned me on was a new wave of British heavy metal – big, dumb rock music. There was a band called Diamond Head – they were basically the band that inspired Metallica. But I also liked bands like Saxon and Iron Maiden.
My mother is British; she’s from Shrewsbury. She turned me onto ‘Monty Python’ very early.
It is no longer acceptable in British politics to be fat or eccentric or religious.
When Ballesteros triumphed at the British Open in 1979, for his first major win, he hit so few fairways off the tee that he was often mistaken for a gallery marshall.
When you are covering a life-or-death struggle, as British reporters were in 1940, it is legitimate and right to go along with military censorship, and in fact in situations like that there wouldn’t be any press without the censorship.
I definitely wasn’t anything special when I first started but I think I adapted quite quickly into racing and it became a bit better slowly. All of cadets, the first four years of karting, I only won one proper race, one! Which was the British Open Championship at PFI and I started 21st and I won.
In a few days an officer came to our camp, under a flag of truce, and informed Hamilton, then a captain of artillery, but afterwards the aid of General Washington, that Captain Hale had been arrested within the British lines condemned as a spy, and executed that morning.
The Seventies were an interesting time to be a reader or writer of fantasy. Tolkien was the great master. Lin Carter was resurrecting wonders of British and American fantasy from the early twentieth century in his Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series.
No theory of government was ever given a fairer test or a more prolonged experiment in a democratic country than democratic socialism received in Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every respect… To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukemia with leeches.
The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff.
Here’s a viewer’s guide to BP media briefings. Whenever you hear someone with a British accent talking about this on behalf of British Petroleum they are not telling you the truth. That’s the bottom-line.
I do not believe it is in the character of the British people to begrudge the lion’s share to those who have genuinely played the lion’s part. They are ready to recognise that those who create the wealth – and I mean not only material but intellectual wealth – enrich the whole nation.
That was exciting man, because the killer is a different kind of character. There are a lot of people who wanted to play the role. I’m happy that Sony and CBS took a chance on a new face. I like the idea that he is from a different country. He has a British sensibility. I like that Billy Bob has a darker edge.
The British have always coped without becoming a dictatorship.
I said that Mrs Obama has been extremely supportive of American designers, but clearly we were disappointed that she chose to wear a British designer for the state dinner…From there, I was so embarrassed that I am definitely going to write to her. She has been super supportive to American designers.
This is not our fight’, the old man said. ‘British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan. . . Look hard for your river Jordan, my child. You’ll find it.
Biographies of British pop celebrities are terrible.
How will the exit affect thousands of British pensioners living in Portugal or Spain who will lose their access to the welfare and health systems? Fifty-three free-trade agreements, which were negotiated by the EU on behalf of all Member States, are also hanging in the balance for the UK.
It is now conceded that all idea of British intervention is at an end… I want to hug the army of the Potomac. I want to get the whole army of Vicksburg drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small man and lick him.
There is sort of a hobbit-like element to a lot of British people. They don’t want to be told something until they have worked it out for themselves.
I think British science is becoming more like American science – and then there is everybody else, I’m afraid.
As a human being I am personally saddened, as I have a great deal of respect for the large number of British colleagues I have worked with over the years. That is why I personally invested countless hours, days and nights, in negotiating a fair deal for the United Kingdom.
I think there’s going to be pressure on all the British athletes. It’s a home Olympics at the end of the day. I like adrenaline, that’s something I feed off. I’m just going to go out there and do my best.
It’s daunting trying to do any service as an American to such a beautiful, fluid speech pattern that you [British] all have. We are just barbarians in comparison.
ID can be hijacked, and cards can be faked. All of the 9/11 terrorists had fake IDs, yet they still got on the planes. If the British national ID card can’t be faked, it will be the first on the planet.
Gas prices and train fares seem to be the two commodities for modern British life that base their prices on a whim, or numbers plucked out of thin air, without a thought to the real cost to those for whom those price hikes mean unimaginable sacrifices in their day to day lives.
British-built railways in India helped the British to make money and maintain order; but, as a by-product, they served to unite the country, making it ripe for independence.
I think the British people have a strong sense of what is fair.
It was just us lampooning our own peer group, saying, well hey, where did this stuff come from? And where does British guys get to be so good at it suddenly?
Although I’m living in California, I’m very proud to be British.
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.
I would sooner play in a good British picture than in the majority of American pictures I have seen.
We Scots have a fierce pride in the things we do that others can never appreciate. I am the British No. 1, but I would prefer to be the British No. 1 from Scotland every time.
When I read that the British army had landed thirty-two thousand troops – and I had realized, not very long before, that Philadelphia only had thirty thousand people in it – it practically lifted me out of my chair.
I am (even after all the torture) amazed at British logic. Never in eight centuries have they succeeded in breaking the spirit of one man who refused to be broken. They have not dispirited, conquered, nor demoralised my people, nor will they ever.
Our [British] summers are often, though beautiful for verdure, so cold, that they are rather cold winters.
We British play an important role in Europe, even if we have a traditional and historical ambivalence towards the continent.
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.
I respect and value the ideals of rugged individualism and self-reliance. But rugged individualism didn’t defeat the British, it didn’t get us to the moon, build our nation’s highways, or map the human genome. We did that together. This is the high call of patriotism.
You’ll get unsociable people whatever the nationality, colour, race or creed. I guess the British abroad have probably got the worst record of anyone.
If pressed, I would say I feel British. It’s where I grew up and where I choose to live, the culture that I love, but I feel perfectly at home in America, I don’t feel like a tourist or anything.
Actually, the British boarding school experience turns out to be not that exotic.
I go to the British Comedy Awards and, you know, quite a few people were making jokes at my expense. It just made me feel awful, because I am there with my wife and she has gone out and bought a dress. And it is my big night and I won, and yet the overriding experience was that of nastiness.
I’ve read a lot of war writing, even World War I writing, the British war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves’s memoir “Goodbye to All That,” and a civilian memoir “Testament of Youth” by Vera Brittain .
More than 55,000 men from Bomber Command lost their lives, of whom 38,000 were British. That’s one in 10 of all the British servicemen lost in the Second World War. It beggars belief that there has not been some recognition for what they gave until now.
The British feel of blues has been hard, rather than emotional. Far too much emphasis on 12 bar, too little attention to words, far too little originality.
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.
I have to say as an actor I have been inspired by so many British actors throughout the years.
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
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.
I am going around British secondary schools, as a gay man talking about my life, and encouraging schools to get rid of homophobic bullying and to care for their gay members of staff and their gay students.
The British have a unique relationship with horses. They are etched into our landscape in chalk, they have been written about, painted, sung about, celebrated and gambled upon for centuries.
All the things that you would have thought would have made me a professional A1 criminal… wrong. I decided that was too lazy and easy, and because of the way British society is, quite frankly you were denied an education, so I got one of my own.
In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have promised, not just instruction but pleasure.
British aren’t really known for their physical loveliness but firemen, generally speaking, are gorgeous.
People are kind of upset with British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward. Over the weekend, he was out on his yacht. And when President Obama found out that Tony Hayward was on his yacht, he was so angry, he missed a putt.
I don’t watch much British television at all. I mean, it’s ironic because I used to work in it for years.
Unlike a lot of British directors, I hadn’t done any theater. But, I had a great mentor who said, “What you’re looking for is exactly the same thing you’ve done in your documentaries, which is moments of emotional truth.
It is doubtless wise, when a reform is introduced, to try to persuade the British public that it is not a reform at all; but appearances must be kept up to some extent at least.
Everyone the world over talks about British actors and British talent and I think thats because we were trained – until now – in theatre.
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.
He made an enormous contribution to British politics in opposition and in government [on Robin Cook]
I like to be comfortable, but I do enjoy being a British gent and dressing up a bit.
I know I’m British. I haven’t spent much time in the U.K., but my parents are British, my family heritage is British, so if I wasn’t British, what would I be? I am British.
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.
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.
I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.
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.
Why don’t I like you?” “Because you think I’m an asshole, and I’m not really, I’m just British and, well, you’re not.
I’m not really much of an actor, so when I started on ‘The Daily Show,’ I was just trying to adopt the faux authority of a newsperson. Having a British accent definitely gave me a sonic leg up on that because there is a faux authority to the British accent in and of itself.
It is the clash of two different worlds that makes British-ness unique – we have an aristocratic, noble history, but it is always contrasted with something rebellious.
Sometimes I’d go [in British accent] “Uhh, brilliant! Absolutely brilliant, thank you. Wonderful. Cheers!” I do say “cheers” automatically,” from living over there. I say “cheers” to everything.
Every empire suffers from hubris, arrogance and condescension, and therefore a moral blindness. That’s true of the American empire, it was true of the British Empireearlier, and it will certainly be true of the Chinese Empire in the future.
With or without the Royals, we are not Americans. Nor are we British. Or French. Or Void. We are something else. And the sooner we define this, the better.
I wonder if a single thought that has helped forward the human spirit has ever been conceived or written down in an enormous room: except, perhaps, in the reading room of the British Museum.
The reason that most British actors are better than most American actors in the end is that they don’t make any money. At the very end of their lives, they get into a space movie and they make a lot of money, but until that happens, basically, they don’t have bank accounts. They live from day to day.
Feminism, in all fields, has yet to produce a single scholar of the intellectual rank of scores of these learned men [e.g., Bruno Snell, Albin Lesky, Denys Page] in the German and British academic tradition.
The British public like a Briton with personality, someone who comes out on court and isn’t dour and down on themselves.
There will be a quick rash of hairy American filth, but it shouldn’t threaten the existence of decent, serious British filth.
The British government is a murder machine.
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
To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.
I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.
I live in L.A. so I worry my kids aren’t that connected to Britain, I suppose I don’t want them to become American kids. We try to get back three or four times a year. When they go to school they speak with a British-American accent but when they come home to us they go back to their British accent.
On one level, I would prefer never to hear the words ‘James Bond’ again, but on another level, it is part of my blood and my life. And it’s the only movie in the world that offers a British actor the chance of international recognition.
Growing up in a Canadian household that was more British than Big Ben, I dreamed of flying to England myself and visiting the places my family never tired of talking about. I always woke up before the plane landed.
I love London and British women.
This sympathy is not translated into force against the British government because it is not like the anti- apartheid movement which had a high profile here and Mandela is a more engaging figure than Yasser Arafat.
I think the British audience might be more open-minded with some of my imagery and weird choices.
In one line of his poem he said good fences make good neighbors. I’d like to think that Alaska and British Columbia working together can prove that we can be pretty darned good neighbors without fences.
There are a few Chinese smuggled in over the borders of British Columbia on the north and Mexico on the south.
The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.
I really like Roland Moret, Alexander McQueen and Marios Schwab, a young British designer.
I think British audiences are accustomed to the ‘boo’ factor and pantomimes.
I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana’s loss, and gratitude for her all-too-short life. It is a chance to show to the whole world the British nation united in grief and respect.
Evolution writ large is the belief that a cloud of hydrogen will spontaneously invent extreme-ultraviolet lithography, perform Swan Lake, and write all the books in the British Museum.
Gandhi was important for another reason as well: his country was suffering under the British Empire, and yet he was leading a very singular kind of resistance to it. At the time he was speaking about the violence in Europe, his followers were in jail as prisoners of the British government.
My mother always tried to keep a little bit of British culture in our family. We’d drink tea all the time!
I guess, on my list, going back to some old American stuff and British stuff that I used to love in the ’80s, would be a British show called Dad’s Army, which recently just turned into a movie.
When Captain America died, Americans heard it in an American way: through the media. When Captain Britain died, the British felt it in their chests.
A fleet of British ships at war are the best negotiators.
I have never, ever sought validation from the arbiters of British poetic taste.
Many of our problems are home-grown. Gordon Brown regularly advised the rest of the world to follow his British model of growth. But the model was flawed. It led to the highest level of household debt in relation to income in the world.
Things have changed so much, with Facebook and Twitter. Everyone is so much more accessible these days: no British athlete has ever experienced what we are experiencing now. It’s such a unique situation with the home Olympics.
I think there’s going to be pressure on all the British athletes. It’s a home Olympics at the end of the day. I like adrenaline, that’s something I feed off. I’m just going to go out there and do my best.
Yes, U.S. travelers dress better. The British are always so conspicuous in hot climates. They don’t seem to wear shorts. American men seem to be comfortable wearing hot-weather clothing.
As a child, I had the opportunity to meet the captain onboard a British Airways flight. It was so exciting to see the cockpit and controls. I was in awe of the captain, and he stamped my log book, which I still have to this day.
The only difference between the Bel Air of the ’90s and the Bel Air of my childhood is that now the nannies are Latina instead of British, and the cars European instead of American
Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore rescinded the state’s European Heritage Month proclamation for fear it would sound racist. It’s too bad. Thus ends a month of celebrating the 400-year progression of our nation’s British culture from wood to steel to graphite shafts.
Paul Revere was warning the British about gun control, and George Washington apparently was crossing the Delaware to bomb an abortion clinic.
I think it’s sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.
It is our job to work for the government of the day and so that means working for Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, and we need to do those preparations just to be sure that we’re ready for whoever you, the British public, elect and that’s core to our civil service values over the last 150 years.
There’s nothing the British like better than a bloke who comes from nowhere, makes it, and then gets clobbered.
I had to choose between American and British actors, and it didn’t take me more than a second to decide: Russians are Europeans and should be played by other Europeans.
India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before.
The only silver lining I can find is that British accents aren’t sexy anymore.
I’m embarrassed when I see Brits abroad; they have their tops off, wear flip flops, and shout at the top of their voices.
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.
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.
I’ve always just had a great feeling for London and British people.
As we conduct our negotiations it must be a priority to allow British companies to trade with the single market in goods and services but also, to regain more control of the numbers of people who are coming here from Europe.
I just wear what I like and lots of it is British.
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.
There is not a power in Europe, no not even Bonaparte’s that is so unlimited [as the British monarchy].
I’ll take anyone to task about UB40. They were as important as Bob Marley in getting reggae into the consciousness of British youth at that time. I’m proud to be their number one fan.
We cannot, with good conscience, expect the British to set up an orderly schedule for the liberation of India before we have decided for ourselves to make all who live in America free.
I’m always surprised that people make such a fuss about Italian tailoring and French design houses. I think traditional British tailoring for men is so good. Everything’s the right cut, the fabrics are good.
That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why she bestowed this particular name upon me I have no idea. Perhaps it had something to do with the great British sea captain Lord Nelson, but that would be only a guess.
Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence, which is a noble thing.
I was the first woman British commissioner, the first woman trade commissioner, so I am also proud to be the first woman High Representative.
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 now.
I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old.
I’ve always said that Adele has turned so many people on to British singers – whether female singers or just like music from this country in general.
British food is a celebration of comfort eating. Our traditional savoury recipes are all about warmth and sustenance, our puddings a roll call of sweet jollity, our cakes are deep and cosy. We appear to be a nation in need of a big, warm hug.
Education in British schools isn’t good enough. It’s not remotely imaginative enough. It lets down too many children, excluding them from society, and, as I’ve often said, people who are excluded from society tend to express themselves in ways not acceptable to society.
When I came to Britain I was in awe of the British press, afraid of them. But they’re not as ferocious as people think. In some instances they are, but when it comes to taking on power they’re really deferential.
I wanted to acknowledge my U.S. heritage and to belong to it more closely. Having said that, I am certainly British by formation and education and readily think of London as home. I had never lived in the U.S. till 2007.
There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose.
The defeat of the Americans in Canada and the advantages gained by the British arms in the Jerseys, and indeed for some months in every other quarter, gave to the royal cause an air of triumph.
Gamal Abdal Nasser, the nationalist leader of Egypt, was described by British Prime Minister Anthony Eden as an Egyptian Hitler. Then it carried on like that. Saddam Hussein became Hitler when he was no longer a friend of the West. Then Milosevic became Hitler.
When I want to relax, I plop down on my couch and watch some great movie, usually a British drama – anything with Colin Firth.
Eastern Muslim countries, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, are relative success stories, as they are not afflicted by the Arab heritage of retreat and humiliation at the hands of the French, Spanish, British, Turks, and Persians.
There will be no more British guys. Unless they are members of the royal family, of course.
Aspects of life here civility, courtesy, coziness have always bound Britons to their country . . . They are part of the British myth, along with lovely countryside, dogs and horses, rose gardens, the Armada, the Battle of Britain.
My younger brother ended up the British chess champion 10 times, a record.
To every man of us, Tobruk was a symbol of British resistance and we were now going to finish with it for good.
The British are coming. One if by land, two if by sea.
I’m quite proud of what I anticipated about reality television from my books in the early ’90s, which I based on the early seasons of ‘Cops’ and on the amazing stuff I had read about happening on Japanese shows and the British ‘Big Brother’.
Considering that I’m British and I talk the way I do, I love it when a director takes a chance on me.
We went to the British Museum, and I was looking up my family in the books – pages and pages on it.
Id love to work in the States; Id love to work anywhere where you get a good script and a good part to play. But I do love British film as well.
At first, I found the music I was making really hard to find a home for. I felt like my attitude was really British, but not the actual sounds I was making. Back in 2003, when I made ‘Galang,’ there were no clubs that had an ‘anything and everything’ attitude.
American audiences tend to be more expressive than British ones.
Lahore, the second largest city of Pakistan, ancient capital of the Punjab, home to nearly as many people as New York, layered like a sedimentary plain with the accreted history of invaders from the Aryans to the Mongols to the British.
The British – who rarely start a fight, but always know how to finish it – have nothing to be ashamed of.
I find it hard to see how my northern cousins could get so worked up about counties created by British imperialists.
I have an image of what a British gentleman looks like, and that image finds real expression in Prince Charles. He is beyond fashion – he is an archetype of style.
I’m a big fan of British journalists like ‘The Independent”s Robert Fisk, but it’s hard to find voices like his in the U.S.
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!
There is a history of gay people pretending to be straight. I want to balance the sides. I’m a straight person pretending to be gay. I’ve had a lot of people to imitate. It’s easy when you’re British; we’re camp by nature, anyway.
Astonishing times. Who would have imagined that the Crazy Gang would yield a Hollywood film star (Vinny Jones), a British television ever-present (John Fashanu) and now a televised African dance champion?
One of my assistants, a British man, says I should find a platform for [cosmetic industry]. Meanwhile I wear make-up.
I find it strange that Gisela Gschaider a 1974 immigrant from Germany is on the brexit panel telling us British what we should do .
The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.
The monarchy is foremost a business, and it’s important to them that the British public continue to finance the excessive luxurious lifestyles of the now quite enormous, wasteful and useless ‘royal’ family. I find it very sad.
Paraguay has had a U.S. supermarket boss as its ambassador for a while. He did the job well. He was there because he wanted to be there. Rather than the British diplomat who didn’t want to be there.
The Indian struggle is not anti-British, it is anti-exploitation, anti-foreign rule, not anti-foreigners.
When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s government fell in May 1940, the nation turned to Churchill. At last, his unique qualities were brought to bear on a supreme challenge, and with his unshakable optimism, his heroic vision, and above all, his splendid speeches, Churchill roused the spirit of the British people.
I was a section commander in the parachute regiment [in the British army].
My British publisher has this independent press. It’s pretty small; they actually won last year. And she’s got this great energy, and she’s fiercely independent, and you know this book was a hard sell. No one wanted to buy this book. But she did, and so it’s paid off for her, I hope.
Those Frenchies may know their pastry, but you can’t beat a bit of British cheese.
[To the British actor who annoyed her by repeated references to his busy ‘shedule’:] I think you’re full of skit.
I had a lot of anger against the way things ‘should be done’ – conforming to social norms, ticking boxes to gain acceptance. Frustration at the pointlessness and predictability of smalltalk. Oh and a lot of anger about tea, which the British seem to use to avoid actually saying anything.
The British public has always had an unerring taste for ungifted amateurs.
I was a journalist when I made ‘I’m British But…’ I’d seen how important the media was in terms of defining Indians – after the riots in the ’80s, I was like, ‘Oh my God!’
I understand why there’s a natural suspicion of the “Next Big British Band.”
While we remember that we are contending against brothers and fellow subjects, we must also remember that we are contending in this crisis for the fate of the British Empire.
Usually, certainly British singers, adopt an American accent when they sing and I think that usually people are thinking of somebody else, but I just think of very specific people.
I am terribly British. Especially in the eyes of Americans. I drink several gallons of tea a day, I’m often excessively polite and it’s only through many years of expensive and painful dental work that I don’t have bad teeth.
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!
The British judiciary needs to support intellectual property.
I think I should be described as ‘bi’ – not bisexual, because I’m not – I’m gay – but ‘binational’ because I retain British nationality, and I add to it being Australian, which is like having your cake and eating it.
This [British] dossier is still considered to be mostly uncorroborated but it`s overall allegation is that the Trump folks knew, the [Donald] Trump folks knew about the Russian campaign to interfere in our election, they supported it, they cooperated with it, and in exchange, they made promises to the Russians.
On the first day of school, my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name and said that from thenceforth that was the name we would answer to in school. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education.
I think American guys tend to be a bit more forward, a bit more chatty and open than the Brits. The Brits seem to have a darker sense of humor, though I have met some Americans who have adopted bits of the British dry sense of humor as well.
The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomyand freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity byallegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.
The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.
In the 1970s, British food was beginning to get good, whereas in France it was just starting its long, sad decline. My most memorable meals, however, have been in Italy.
It is not easy to get parts in mainstream films for most people of color. Hollywood and British writers are not writing parts for us, or the directors are not interested in casting us in parts that are color-blind.
On the whole, British actors star in theater, and I think there’s something quite grounding about that.
We have lost the good old British spirit. Instead we have American journalism and black-shirted buffoons making a cheap imitation of ice-cream sellers.
[Robinson Crusoe] is the true prototype of the British colonist. The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity.
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house?
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.
I’ve always worked on the fringe of the British press establishment, carving out this niche for myself.
I do mostly British projects, and for family reasons and life reasons Britain’s my home, where I have a lovely garden.
What good would it be to fight a war with the British and end up with your own king? Nobody had any idea that George Washington would be George Washington.
No agreement between the British and Muslims can affect me. An agreement between Hindus and Muslims alone will affect me.
I guess something that I’ve noticed from American acts who had success in touring is more of an explanation as to their music. Which is I think quite funny. I think British acts might like to leave more to the imagination – maybe a bit more obscure perhaps – a bit more shy.
I go out with a lot of British people. Some of them say I sound a little tipsy.
I’m for fighting a war on terrorism, not a war in Southwest Asia that Alexander the Great couldn’t win, the British Empire couldn’t win, the Soviet Union couldn’t win. That’s stupid. It’s a waste of resources; a waste of America’s best and brightest.
It has, therefore, been a favorite boast of the people of Wales and Cornwall, that the original British stock flourishes in its unmixed purity only among them.
A university anywhere can aim no higher than to be as British as possible for the sake of the undergraduates, as German as possible for the sake of the public at large-and as confused as possible for the preservation of the whole uneasy balance.
I read two mysteries a day when I was a kid. All of Agatha Christie, all of ‘Sherlock Holmes.’ I’ve seen every single British detective show ever made.
On my first day at Yale Law School, there were posters in the hallways announcing an event with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. I couldn’t believe it: Tony Blair was speaking to a room of a few dozen students? If he came to Ohio State, he would have filled an auditorium of a thousand people.
[Congress] is not the British Parliament, and I hope it never will become the British Parliament… Are we going to bring the president in here and have a question period like the prime minister has in Great Britain?
Mountain Pine bark beetles need -37В°C (-35В°F) for three days to freeze to death. Unfortunately, with global warming, that no longer happens in British Columbia [Canada]. This means the population of the beetles have exploded. They have destroyed more forests than all the environmentalists put together have saved.
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.]
Could I see myself with a British boyfriend? Absolutely. The way they wear their pants is so cute. Guys don’t do it in America. Their style is cute. I just feel like Brits are honest – period. And that’s what I like.
It is time my colleagues got real. All British universities doing worthwhile research use animals, and, instead of hiding, they should be boasting of their achievements.
When the British Open is in Scotland, there’s something special about it. And when it’s at St. Andrews, it’s even greater.
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.
Sometimes the British press is maybe a little bit racist.
The only difference between the Bel Air of the ’90s and the Bel Air of my childhood is that now the nannies are Latina instead of British, and the cars European instead of American.
No one will expect the British Government or the Government of India to give way to threats of violence, disorder and chaos; and, indeed, representatives of large sections of Indian opinion have expressly warned us that we must not do so.
I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other.
I feel that a lot of British comedy is often too bombastic, too obvious, dressing up and shouting and pulling funny faces.
They tell me that So-and-So, who does not write prefaces, is no charlatan. Well, I am. I first caught the ear of the British public on a cart in Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass bands,and this . . . because . . . I am a natural-born mountebank.
My father is Jewish, and I look exactly like him My mother is British, but she’s of French extraction.
That was after Napoleon died because there is still a controversy as to whether Napoleon was poisoned with arsenic. And the French say the British did it and the British say the French did it, but he died before the test for arsenic was available.
What will not luxury taste? Earth, sea, and air, Are daily ransack’d for the bill of fare. Blood stuffed in skins is British Christians’ food, And France robs marshes of the croaking brood.
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.
The whole of government needs to contribute to the shared goal of restructuring the British economy. But that means taking on the myth that the Treasury either knows best or can run it all. It just doesn’t.
British Conservatives base their entire approach to politics on the rule of law, and rightly so.
There’s no pleasing the British, or winning their favor. They simply hate politicians. All politicians. Hatred goes with politicians like mint sauce with lamb. It’s as old as Parliaments.
I hate that rule that says write about what you know, it leads to too many British novels about marriages going slightly wrong. Write about what you don’t know, just act as though you do.
The Egba kingdom was one of the very last to be ceded to the British protectorate. It remained almost an independent entity within what is now known as Nigeria, simply because of its own traditional structure of governance.
Chum was a British boy’s weekly which, at the end of the year was bound into a single huge book; and the following Christmas parents bought it as Christmas presents for male children.
I am closer to the pacifist side, in that I think that the British response to German aggression, which was to try to starve the Continent into a state of revolt and to terrorize German civilians with bombing raids, was part of the total catastrophe.
There is an honourable tradition in British public life that those charged with authority at the top of an organisation should accept responsibility for what happens in that organisation. I am therefore writing to the prime minister today to tender my resignation as chairman of the BBC.
My motto is “Unite now, today if you can; fight if you must. But in every case avoid British intervention.”
George Washington hated the guerrillas. He wanted to imitate the British red coat armies, fighting as gentlemen are supposed to fight.
When I was in England doing Romeo and Juliet as a child star, I was interviewed by the British press, who are even more vicious and cruel than the Americans. So I have been extremely guarded ever since.
A British declaration be taken against Martinez for ‘capturing and robbing us.
The difference between the American version of ‘Live Aid’ and the British one – in England, if you wanted a cup of tea, you made it yourself. If you wanted a sandwich, you bought it. In typical American style, at the American concert, there were laminated tour passes and champagne and caviar.
Yes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on.
I stand on my public record as a defender of the human rights of Muslims, notably my work for Moazzam Begg and other British Muslims detained without trial in Guantanamo Bay.
The most dangerous country for the U.S. now is Pakistan. … We haven’t been this vulnerable since the British burned Washington in 1814.
There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual.
I’ve never watched reality shows, except for the Great British Bake Off, which is magnificent.
I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense… I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.
The British countryside is threatened by people and interests who really do not care for it
Black history is a series of missing chapters from British history. I’m trying to put those bits back in.
It is absolutely bedrock to the British Army’s philosophy that a commanding officer is responsible for what goes on within his command.
Wind is part of the British Open. It is an examination and it took me a long time to pass the examination. Eighty per cent of the fellows out there have not passed the test.
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.
British girls are as temperamental as Americans.
I think the British learn their history through the prism of this gallery of grotesques known as the royals.
In the Fall of 1774 & Winter of 1775, I was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics, who formed ourselves into a committee for the purpose of watching the movements of the British soldiers, and gaining every intelligence of the movements of the Tories.
The British philosopher Bertrand Russell said that philosophy went downhill after Democritus and did not recover until the Renaissance.
The British have given me good support for the last 8 years and have always believed in me.
There are cases – for example, the American Revolution. George Washington’s army lost just about every battle with the British, who had a much better army. The war was basically won by guerrilla forces that managed to undermine the British occupation.
The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture.
By the time I came to the States, I really understood how a magazine works. I came to ‘Vogue’ as creative director, and three years later I went back to London to be editor in chief of British ‘Vogue.’
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.
It is quite untrue that British people don’t appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.
I think Americans still can’t help but respond to the natural authority of this voice. Deep down they long to be told what to do by a British accent. That’s why so many infomercials have British people.
While the demand for organic food outstrips supply, we happen to know that 77 percent of consumers don’t want genetically engineered crops grown in this country. Consumers can choose whether or not to buy organic produce. Genetically modified ingredients will deny us choice in the long run.
The Cinquecento was an engine of motivation at Fiat. It refurbished the image of the entire company. It’s a symbol for the company, but it’s more than that. It’s a global Italian symbol, as Mini is a global British symbol and the Beetle is a global German symbol.
To me, the [British] Open is the tournament I would come to if I had to leave a month before and swim over.
British establishment uses “the royal we,” as in, “We think this.” You hear a lot of that these days. It erroneously suggests that those who are making the decisions to bomb countries, to devastate economies, to take part in acts of international piracy involve all of us.
I’d like to do a little bit of everything. I think the only thing I can’t do is a British accent, so that’s out. No Shakespeare for me. Unless it’s like one of those modern-day remakes.
With the ministry’s motto ‘Research on a Shoestring’ emblazoned on his coat of arms, he has to struggle with a treasury more interested in surtax relief than national survival. [Responding to an earlier statement by British Science Minister, Lord Hailsham, that British scientists were being recruited by the U.S.]
There’s been (if you sort of scan the magazines) announcements of different performers that has come and tried to get the British audience to go crazy, simply by them entering the stage because they had a hit record. It just doesn’t happen. That happens in America.
You’ll notice all around the Hindu temples couples, statues and drawings, in various erotic forms of love-making. This used to give the British a lot of trouble because they were kind of white and uptight. It didn’t quite fit. How could a temple of God be covered with pictures of people, in their term, fornicating?
The British capitalize on their accent when they don’t want you to know what they’re saying. But if you wake them up at 4 A.M., they speak perfect English, the same as we do.
I very much consider myself British.
After my grandfather’s plane took enemy fire, he was denied permission to land at the first available airstrip. In that classic British bureaucratic way, they said he had to go back to your own airbase in the Midlands. They crashed between the coast and the airfield.
There is so much cross-pollination between the U.S. and Britain in terms of comedians. British TV comedies work well in the U.S. American stand-ups make it big in Britain.
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.
Its subject is the slow and erratic process by which the peoples of the British Isles learnt – and then for long periods forgot – about the ‘Safeguard of the Sea’, as the 15th century phrase had it, meaning the use of the sea for national defence, and the defence of those who used the sea.
I’m not British. I’m not American. I’m not French. Whatever thing they practise, that is their business. I am an African. I am Rwandese.
We must assist the British in the war as if there were no White Paper and we must resist the White Paper as if there were no war.
Another British study discovered that average eight-year-olds were better able to identify characters from the Japanese card trading game Pokemon than native species in the community where they lived: Pikachu, Metapod, and Wigglytuff were names more familiar to them than otter, beetle, and oak tree.
I always have to go out to work even if it’s just a desk somewhere or an office or the British Library.
Ferguson argued that British involvement in World War I was unnecessary, far too costly in lives and money for any advantage gained, and a Pyrrhic victory that in many ways contributed to the end of the Empire.
No, I’m not rich. I had a tax problem in this country, curiously enough, and my accountant said the British government was patently wrong in taxing me, and they were, but we couldn’t persuade them and it cost me everything I had.
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
My first outdoor cooking memories are full of erratic British summers, Dad swearing at a barbecue that he couldn’t put together, and eventually eating charred sausages, feeling brilliant.
My influences were Peter Sellers and the great British character actors.
I can always tell if a band has a British rhythm section due to the gritty production.
Yeah. Floyd is his batman.” His what?” Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant.” You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don’t make you money than anybody I know.
I would like to express to all Londoners, to all of the British people, the solidarity, the compassion and the friendship of France and the French people.
The fashions we call English in Paris are French in London, and vice versa. Franco-British hostility vanishes when it comes to questions of words and clothing. God save the King is a tune composed by Lully for a chorus in a play by Racine.
At the moment the British Common-wealth is a Commonwealth of White nation.
Although I don’t have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears.
The British Labour movement is today, and for many years has been, working in a narrow circle of strikes that are looked upon, not as an expedient, and not as a means of propaganda, but as an ultimate aim.
Teaching the history of the British Empire links in with that of the world: for better and for worse, the Empire made us what we are, forming our national identity. A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.
The modern Middle East was largely created by the British. It was they who carried the Allied war effort in the region during World War I and who, at its close, principally fashioned its peace. It was a peace presaged by the nickname given the region by covetous British leaders in wartime: ‘The Great Loot.’
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.
Simply asking the British people to carry on accepting a European settlement over which they have had little choice is a path to ensuring that when the question is finally put – and at some stage it will have to be – it is much more likely that the British people will reject the EU.
I shall endeavor to marshal British opinion against a course of action which would bring in my opinion the greatest evils upon the people of India, upon the people of Great Britain and upon the British Empire itself.
I can’t always be making “British films”. Why should we be making films about corsets and horses and girls learning to drive when Americans send over an event movie and make five or 10 million?
In 1860 a total eclipse of the sun was visible in British America.
I love ‘Skins’. I was a huge fan of the British series. I love how everyone is freaking out about it.
And what is the reaction of the British politcal class? Well the Lib Dems, still think that the Euro is a success! I don’t quiet think where Cleggy gets this from, I don’t know. Prehaps he is cosidering an alternative career, as a stand up comedian, once he’s out of politics.
In dealing with the China problem, the British and American side, which had particularly strong interests in China, should have based its judgments about the origins of the problem on direct observation of the actual circumstances at the time.
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.
You can’t just slander someone, defame them, lie about them. You can’t incite people to crime. There’s all sorts of reasonable restrictions on free speech that are already codified in the British common-law system.
My hobbies are cooking and gardening, especially growing orchids. I love soccer, my husband and I support a British team called Chelsea, and I also enjoy tennis. We have 3 cats.
I want to experience that massive adrenalin rush when you step into a new stadium, all the more so when that Olympic Stadium is packed full of people waving British flags.
No British politician has ever been more despised by the British people than Margaret Thatcher.
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.
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.
As I suffer in the defence of my Country, I must consider this hour as the most glorious of my life -Remember that I die as becomes a British Officer, while the manner of my death must reflect disgrace on your Commander.
What makes me really happy is a walk in the English countryside. A nice sunset, that British countryside – it means I’m home.
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.
American television constantly tries to co-op British comedy and create their own version of it. Most of the time it doesn’t work; obviously, in the case of ‘The Office,’ it did. But a lot of times, it doesn’t really work.
The US head of state grew up on food stamps. The British head of state grew up on the postage stamps.
I lived in London for eight years and I like to say that I am two parts American and one part British because I lived there for a third of my life.
I would rather be British than just.
I’m quite British in the sense of not expressing my emotions much. I save it for my songs. If you ask about a death in the family, or a lover, I will not be emotional. I’d probably answer with a smile. Because that’s what we British blokes do.
I’m very proud to be British, and my brand is British.
Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.
When I do watch things, they tend to be a lot of comedies. I actually like some of the British comedy series. But, on the whole, I’m not a huge viewer of anything.
London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world… It’s got everything you want, really.
When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that’s not something I could do.
We have the character of an island nation: independent, forthright, passionate in defence of our sovereignty. We can no more change this British sensibility than we can drain the English Channel. And because of this sensibility, we come to the European Union with a frame of mind that is more practical than emotional.
When people say England, they sometimes mean Great Britain, sometimes the United Kingdom, sometimes the British Isles, – but never England.
I just would like to keep going. If I kept getting the kind of work that I’ve been getting for the last 20 years for the next 20, I’d be a bloody Dame of the British Empire. I’d be so happy.
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.
[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!
If you are British, you soon get used to people not loving you. The Irish remind us of offenses from 100 years ago. Perhaps we should react to what the French did to us even longer ago.
I grew up with British rock.
My comedic instinct, is a little bit more rooted in – my mother’s British so I’ve always been more of the dry receiver of the crazy as opposed to the initiator of the crazy. I’m kind of predisposed to be the straight man.
My first book, Fast Forward, was about growing up in the shadow of Hollywood and how kids are affected by the culture of materialism and the cult of celebrity, and I’ve often felt the reason my work has an audience in the UK is because it’s everything the British love to hate about the Americans.
The FГјhrer confirms my impressions of yesterday. He would like an understanding with Great Britain. He knows that war with the British will be hard and bloody, and knows also that people everywhere today are averse to bloodshed.
The British have a remarkable talent for keeping calm, even when there is no crisis.
Our nonviolence vis-Р°-vis the British Government has been the nonviolence of the weak.
I didn’t really see the British punk movement, if that’s what it was, as wildly original, because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973, really.
British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism.
…in rebellion against the typical British-type dry flies, I created the Wulff series.
Sometimes Americans don’t quite get my sense of humor. My good ol’ British sarcasm seems to go over their heads.
I’ve participated in many demonstrations since I was a child. When I was at medical college, I was fighting King Farouk, then British colonization, against Nasser, against Sadat who pushed me into prison, Mubarak who pushed me into exile. I never stopped.
I do feel a certain love from the British public.
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!
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.
The British Museum is great for seeing how excellent we were at stealing things.
British and American women have very different styles and a different way of living.
The parallel development in American blues to the British movement has resulted in Johnny Winters.
British people might wonder ‘What the hell is Kenneth Branagh doing directing ‘Thor?’ but the person asking that the most was Kenneth Branagh. I think he was more surprised than anyone else to find himself doing this kind of film.
To put it in context, the federal government was, at the beginning [of the Vancouver meeting], talking about a $15-per-tonne floor for carbon emissions. We’re at $30 a tonne, so we’re already double that. But our economy is growing at a faster rate – three per cent of GDP is our projected growth in British Columbia.
My family spans many world religions, ethnicities and nationalities. The truth is that I don’t have one identity. I’m Scottish, British, European, Humanist, Atheist and in part at least, culturally Jewish.
British teams bring me good luck.
We have lost all our big Australian industries and icons, including Qantas when it sold 25 % of its shares and a controlling interest to British Airways.
I’m not a Little Englander. Historically, British people have always been travellers. I look in the world as one place. You have to think in a global sense. Cinema is a global endeavour. My roots are in England but my endeavours are worldwide.
Why is thinking about crime or imagining crime so goddamn central to pop culture? It doesn’t matter whether it’s American TV or British TV. And there’s entire sections of bookstores devoted to crime.
I often find myself privately stewing about much British art, thinking that except for their tremendous gardens, that the English are not primarily visual artists, and are, in nearly unsurpassable ways, literary.
I never had a black teacher or lecturer, I never once met a black British person who held any sort of professional or managerial role.
Women need to have access to counseling services in the way that American or British women can have if something really bad or upsetting happens to them.
A lot of the time, the British press make me ashamed and embarrassed to be British. They give others the impression that the British are selfish, envious and bitter people, which is simply not true in my opinion. I think that British people in general are really nice and friendly.
My unbeaten record and the 10 British Open wins have not been equalled.
When the weather’s good, there’s no better place to be than the British countryside.
I don’t tend to watch too many American comedies. I love British comedy.
I even got a letter from a young woman in British Columbia that began as follows: ‘Today I am eighteen. I am sitting at the window, looking out at the rain, and thinking how much I love you.’
Although socialism is widely held by the establishment to be outdated, the things that are most popular in British society today are little pockets of socialism, where areas of life have been excluded from the crude operation of market forces and are protected for the benefit of the community
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.’
Sometimes I feel I have more faith in European ideals than some of my British or French friends. For them, it’s a financial burden. For me, Europe is primarily about values, about fundamental rights, freedom, women’s rights.
I wrote ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ at the age of 30 under intense, unshared personal stress and in extreme privacy. As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Bonn, I was a secret to my colleagues, and much of the time to myself.
Gandhi has asked that the British Government should walk out of India and leave the Indian people to settle differences among themselves, even if it means chaos and confusion.
Now the British are coming. I think Cameron should ask the Chinese government not to make people ‘disappear’ or to jail them merely because they have different opinions.
There are no countries in the world less known by the British than those selfsame British Islands.
There are women (some men, too, but mostly women) who are going to the occupied Palestinian territories to stand with the victims of Israeli occupation. These are very courageous Israeli women and some British and American women. That’s something quite new.
I like the best of the British press. The best of the British press is very good.
I don’t care to analyze acting. On the other hand there is a fascination because distributors are putting out British films. You get films here with great performances you’ll never see again. Why compare. We should go after the businessmen.
The British press hate a winner who’s British. They don’t like any British man to have balls as big as a cow’s like I have.
The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.
I am leading a war against the British Empire. I’m not worried about what Democratic Party hacks say or do.
There are 3 basic differences between we British and you Americans. One, we speak English, and you don’t. Two, when we have a “World Championship”, we invite teams from other nations. Three, when you meet the British head of State, you only have to get down on one knee.
Biden’s first failed run for the presidency was ended by his dishonesty over his academic record and his plagiarism, including the biography and speeches of British Labor politician Neil Kinnock.
The refusal of the British and Russian peoples to accept what appeared to be inevitable defeat was the great factor in the salvage of our civilization.
I consider myself a pretty rounded guy. I’ve done pretty elite things in business, sport and academics and all of a sudden I woke up one morning and I’m a ‘big, black, British, gay guy’. That was frustrating at times.
I love Britain, I lived there for nine years doing shows and things, but I don’t know what a British sensibility is. I’d like to have someone tell me what an American sensibility is.
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.
That could sound arrogant, I guess, but sometimes I feel like I have a bit of a Zelig thing. I’ll blend in wherever. I’m from the South, so I’ll have a Southern accent when I’m home. But if I’m up here in New York, I have a British accent.
I love London, I love the British people.
I do think British tailoring is the best. French people hate me when I say that, but I do think it’s true.
In the period of ’60s to the ’90s, British art schools were small, and the number of student was small. The personal contact was great.
We do recognise that there are areas where the current financial services market, the banking market, just isn’t working for chunks of the British economy.
People fail you, children disappoint you, thieves break in, moths corrupt, but an Order of the British Empire goes on for ever.
To win more medals at Beijing is just fantastic, and British cycling has come a huge way in the last few years.
Racing cars which have been converted for road use never really work. It’s like making a hard core adult film, and then editing it so that it can be shown in British hotels. You’d just end up with a sort of half hour close up of some bloke’s sweaty face.
I would not say that I was, these days, a ‘student’ of philosophy, although in my youth I was quite deeply involved with certain aspects of the British pragmatists.
I must fight unto the death the unholy attempt to impose British methods and British institutions on India.
I’ve been trekking the hills and lanes of the British countryside for nearly four decades now and I’ve come to associate my passion with overexcited poets rather than pampered painters.
British comedy fans go crazy.
The ways of the British are inscrutable but they always seem to obtain their own ends without compromising their dignity or their honor.
The English country house is certainly an icon of British culture.
Technically it was a victory for the British, who attacked the patriot fortifications but a Pyrrhic victory if ever there was: out of 2,200 British soldiers 1,034 were killed or wounded, including one in nine of all the officers the British lost in the whole war.
If you travel to the continent you never have any problems overtaking, this is the only country I know where the outside lane is congested and the two inner lanes are empty. It drives me crazy. I’m ashamed that is so typically British.
I love British humor. It’s just so – surreal.
The British soldiers are fellows who have all enlisted for drink. That is the plain fact – they have all enlisted for drink.
