Quotes About Britain

“We stole countries with the cunning use of flags. Just sail around the world and stick a flag in. "I claim India for Britain!" They're going "You can't claim us, we live here! Five hundred million of us!" "Do you have a flag ... ? "No ... " "Well, if you don't have a flag, then you can't have a country. Those are the rules ... that I just made up!”

— Eddie Izzard

“The new naval treaty permits the United States to spend a billion dollars on warships-a sum greater than has been accumulated by all our endowed institutions of learning in their entire history. Unintelligence could go no further! ... [In Great Britain, the situation is similar.] ... Until the figures are reversed, ... nations deceive themselves as to what they care about most.”

— Abraham Flexner

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

— Tanya Huff

“Now it turns out that a few broadsheet film critics in Britain do indeed belong to a category of people who would have resisted Hitler when he came to power. So the great shame is, clearly film critics should have been running Austria at the time, because Hitler would have represented no problem to them at all. [The Guardian's] Peter Bradshaw would have known exactly what to do, and he would not have been remotely fallible to any Nazi who threatened his life. No, he would have died in heroic acts of individual resistance. So it's a privilege to live among people who enjoy such moral certainty.”

— David Hare

“Film and TV V.I.P, seeker of the peace, part time chandelier cleaner, a legend in his own time, oppressor of champions, soldier of fortune, world traveller, bonvivant, all round good guy, international lover, casual hero, philosopher, wars fought, bears wrestled, equations solved, virgins enlightened, revolutions quelled, tigers castrated, orgies organised, bars quaffed dry, governments run, test rockets flown, life president of the Liquidarian Society of Great Britain and Ireland.”

— Billy Connolly

“I have a special "ah, here I am again, I know exactly what they are going to have for breakfast" feeling when I get back into Roman Britain, which is very nice.”

— Rosemary Sutcliff

“The truth was that women in Britain in 1833 did not have options. They had the path upon which they tread. Upon which they were forced to tread. Upon which they were made to feel grateful they were forced to tread.”

— Sarah MacLean

“Cambridge is thriving and Britain is working. We have been telling people - 'if you value it, vote for it' - and this is particularly relevant in Cambridge.”

— Anne Campbell

“People in Scotland appreciate homegrown talent, but it's getting harder and harder to get films made in Britain.”

— Robert Carlyle

“We need to show that we know and understand and can reflect today's Britain. Today we don't.”

— Francis Maude

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

— Anthony Sampson

“MRSA, which is a kind of super bug mutant, is killing 10,000 people a year in Britain.”

— George Galloway

“Surgery has warped the faces of every woman over thirty; they don't look younger, just not quite human in a way society has decided to pretend not to see. Half of the people are talking more to the holograms from their rings or badges than they are to the people around them. What conversation I can hear is mostly gossip: who's shagging who, who's making money, who's losing it, who's not invited to the next party like this. Maybe the technology is different, but the shallowness of the scene is probably universal. So this is the life my father escaped when he chose to go into science, to leave Great Britain and join Mom in California. He was even smarter than I knew.”

— Claudia Gray

“Britain has a Terrorism Act, which has within it a portion called Schedule 7, which is quite unique. What it is is it gives officials the ability to detain people at the border as they go in or out or even transit through the country.”

— Sarah Harrison

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

— Calvin Harris

“Although I get so much fan mail from Great Britain, tell me, am I more famous there than Michael Madsen?”

— Tom Sizemore

“I certainly feel I'm carrying the flag for Britain. I feel an honour in that but, at the same time, knowing my roots are in Africa, I'd like that to help motivate people from there. Even coming from a third world country, it is possible to get to the top of wherever they want to be.”

— Chris Froome

“The web of influence which News Corporation spun in Britain, which effectively bent politicians, police and many others in public life to its will, amounted to a shadow state.”

— Thomas Watson, Jr.

“When the Americans are behind you, they're behind you 100%, and this gives you real confidence as an architect. They expect you to lead a building project - to make the kind of big and costly decisions that, in Britain, have been handed over to project managers and cost-cutters.”

— David Chipperfield

“What I can say that's different in American television ... in Britain, they wouldn't cancel something after a couple of episodes. In the States they would. They would just decide it's not working, take it off and put something else in on the fall schedule.”

— John Barrowman

“We have got this Damocles' sword of Standard and Poor's hanging over us, with the commitment they have made to review Britain's credit rating in the summer of 2010 after the general election. Everybody in Britain has a vital interest in ensuring that the triple A credit rating agency is maintained.”

— Philip Hammond

“We've had American TV shows in Britain for years and that hasn't affected our culture at all.”

— Prince Andrew

“Halloween isn't the only time for ghosts and ghost stories. In Victorian Britain, spooky winter's tales were part of the Christmas season, often told after dinner, over port or coffee.”

— Michael Dirda

“I don't see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that's almost inconceivable.”

— Noam Chomsky

“I could give you a long list of things I like about Britain, but essentially what it comes down to is that I feel about Britain the same way I feel about my wife. I'm crazy about my wife - we just kind of suit each other. I wouldn't say that she's the most fantastic human being that's ever lived, but she is for me.”

— Bill Bryson

“In 1907, Britain and Russia signed a treaty dividing Iran between them; no Iranian was at the negotiations or even knew they were taking place.”

— Stephen Kinzer

“The era of industrial Britain, where a large section of our workforce provided cheap labour in factories and processing goods, is over.”

— Lucy Powell

“People should vote for democracy, and Britain should vote for hope.”

— Michael Gove

“Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring.”

— Sara Sheridan

“In Britain, the press want to kill a show by revealing what's coming up and spoiling the pleasure.”

— Hugh Bonneville

“It does mean, if this is the idea, the end of Britain as an independent European state ... it means the end of a thousand years of history.”

— Hugh Gaitskell

“An alliance with France was enlisted in the war for independence from Britain, then loosened in the aftermath, as France undertook revolution and embarked on a European crusade in which the United States had no direct interest. When President Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address-delivered in the midst of the French revolutionary wars-counseled that the United States "steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world" and instead "safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies," he was issuing not so much a moral pronouncement as a canny judgment about how to exploit America's comparative advantage: the United States, a fledgling power safe behind oceans, did not have the need or the resources to embroil itself in continental controversies over the balance of power.”

— Henry Kissinger

“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.”

— Frank Spotnitz

“The point about football in Britain is that it is not just a sport people take to, like cricket or tennis. It is built into the urban psyche, as much a common experience to our children as are uncles and school. It is not a phenomenon : it is an everyday matter.”

— Arthur Hopcraft

“In three weeks Britain will have her neck wrung like a chicken.”

— Maxime Weygand

“In no country has the historical blackout been more intense and effective than in Great Britain. Here it has been ingeniously christened The Iron Curtain of Discreet Silence. Virtually nothing has been written to reveal the truth about British responsibility for the Second World War and its disastrous results.”

— Harry Elmer Barnes

“Ireland is a small but insuppressible island half an hour nearer the sunset than Great Britain.”

— Tom Kettle

“In fact, it was the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century. The largest, most powerful force ever set forth from Britain or any nation.”

— David McCullough

“By the time I was 18, I had absorbed punk rock from America, Britain, and the West Coast. All of it was so dark and weird and different and cool and hot and sexy and rebellious. It was a fist-in-the-air kind of rebellion that I wasn't getting from the '70s mainstream.”

— Michael Stipe

“The fact is that Britain is the most warlike nation on earth. In the history of armed combat, we are the only democracy to have declared war on another democracy - England versus Finland in the second world war, in case you're interested - and we're always at the front of the queue when Johnny Foreigner gets a bit uppity. Who stood up to the Kaiser? Who stood up to Adolf? And let's not forget the Argies. What other country would have sent its fleet halfway round the world and lost 250 men to protect a flock of sheep and some oil that might or might not be there? We're still at it.”

— Jeremy Clarkson

“[The Royal Society] is quite simply the voice of science in Britain. It is intellectually rigorous, not afraid to be outspoken on controversial issues such as climate change, but it is not aggressively secular either, insisting on a single view of the world. In fact, there are plenty of eminent scientists - Robert Winston, for instance - who are also men of faith.”

— Bill Bryson

“I?m much bigger in Britain than I am there. I'm well-known, but my name's That Guy in America ... People shout: "Hey ? I know you! You're That Guy.".”

— Billy Connolly

“I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.”

— Thomas Paine

“The extremes of opulence and of want are more remarkable, and more constantly obvious, in [Great Britain] than in any other place that I ever saw.”

— John Quincy Adams

“Britain cherishes her eccentrics and wisely holds that the function of government is to build a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish.”

— Quentin Crisp

“Britain and Pakistan will jointly fight the menace of terrorism .. Both the countries are facing a common threat of terrorism and we know that Pakistan is even more committed to fighting this menace”

— Gordon Brown

“The English are loth to express their feelings, but in my stall in the choir I could feel the pent-up, passionate emotion, and also the fear of the congregation, not of death or wounds or material loss, but of defeat and the final ruin of Britain.”

— Winston Churchill

“[Should Britain fail, then the entire world would] sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister ... by the lights of perverted science.”

— Winston Churchill

“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.”

— Margaret Thatcher

“We had to do what we had to do - Britain is great again.”

— Margaret Thatcher