British Quotes

I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.

I'm still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent - you get contaminated after so long.

I would like to tell our American, British and Spanish friends that the Iraqi crisis is not a problem between the United States and France, but between those who want to move forward in the logic of war and the international community.

The first condition of success for the League of Nations is, therefore, a firm understanding between the British Empire and the United States of America and France and Italy that there will be no competitive building up of fleets or armies between them.

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.

Continental directors, as opposed to British and American, tend to be somewhat high-handed in their approach.

When Joan D' Arc was asked by her judges why as a Christian she did not love the British, she answered that she did love them, but she loved British in their country. In the same way, we do not hate the Turks, we love them, but in their country.

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.

Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't.

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.

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.

The North American intellectual tradition began, I maintain, in the encounter of British Romanticism with assertive, pragmatic North American English - the Protestant plain style in both the U.S. and Canada, with its no-nonsense Scottish immigrants.

This most dangerous enemy is the American counterpart of the British Fabian Socialist, who denies that he is a Socialist and operates behind a mask which he calls National Planning.

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.

I think sensitive is the wrong description of me. I'm British, actually, so quite bad at expressing myself in conversation, as any ex-girlfriend will tell you. I'm probably emotionally stunted.

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.

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 think the British people are very, very attached to the idea that the health service is free at the point of use. But there is no reason why every doctor, nurse and teacher in this country has to be employed by the state.

When you have energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum, both of which are perhaps represented in this room, saying there is a problem with excess carbon dioxide emission, I think we ought to listen.

The Irish and British, they love satire, it's a large part of the culture.

Over 30 years ago, Airbus was founded by a European consortium of French, German, and later Spanish and British companies to compete in the large commercial aircraft industry with U.S. companies.

I grew up with British rock.

This was the period when I used all the influence I had to get the British to abandon their export trade, and as much as possible convert all of their manufacturing facilities to the immediate needs of the war, including civilian, as well as military requirements.

When I was a child we were sufficiently well off for me to be a picky eater and I still cannot eat vegetables cooked in the traditional British manner.

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.

Most British people are keen to remain in a European free trade zone; and most EU states are keen to keep us there, because we buy from them more than we sell to them to the tune of £40 million per day.

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.

The parallel development in American blues to the British movement has resulted in Johnny Winters.

The thinking was that so long as the British kept our basic documents in their hands and so long as they kept the formal right to change them, changes in our system would be careful and deliberate.

Sitting down to a meal with an Indian family is different from sitting down to a meal with a British family.