Britain Quotes - Page 5

• The United States stands with our friends in Britain as they recover from today's shock of terrorism. These barbaric acts strengthen our resolve and remind us all of the danger of complacency during our continued war on terror.

  Mark Foley

  War, United States, Today

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• The United States may have retained more of the intellectual imprint of the British 18th century than Britain itself.

  William Rees-Mogg

  History, Intellectual, United States

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• Out of the chaos of post-Roman Dark Age Britain, the English had created the world's first nation-state: One king, one country, one church, one currency, one language and a single unified representative national administration. Never again in England would sovereignty descend to the merely regional level. Never again would the idea of England and the unity of England ever be challenged.

  David Starkey

  Country, Kings, Dark

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• I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.

  Jonathan Coe

  Real, Knowing, Cynical

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• Cordings make the best Covert coats, corduroys, moleskins and all the accoutrements. When I need a covert coat I get it from Cordings rather than make one myself and I'm a tailor so I should know! Cordings is without doubt, the best at what they do; they produce a quality which surpasses any other company of its kind in Britain.

  Mark Powell

  Doubt, Quality, Needs

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• Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - old churches, country lanes, people saying 'Mustn't grumble,' and 'I'm terribly sorry but,' people apologizing to ME when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, tea and crumpets, summer showers and foggy winter evenings - every bit of it.

  Bill Bryson

  Summer, Country, Sorry

  "Notes from a Small Island". Book by Bill Bryson, 1995.

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• The American dream? We don't have a dream in Britain because we're bloody awake!

  Al Murray

  Dream, America, World

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• 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

  Country, War, Men

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• Not only do we mock the Eurovision Song Contest itself, but we lampoon other European countries for taking it so seriously, and they all retaliate by voting for each other every year and ignoring our (sometimes) palpably superior songs. Accordingly, Britain has become the Millwall FC of Eurovision: we are hated, we know we are hated, and we pretend we are happy to be hated. It's actually quite a sad state of affairs.

  Marcus Berkmann

  Country, Song, Years

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• Smoking is the now the principal avoidable cause of premature death in Britain. It hits the worst off people hardest of all. Smoking is one of the principal causes of the health gap which leads to poorer people being ill more often and dying sooner.

  Frank Dobson

  People, Smoking, Dying

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• We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Exercise, Liberty, Levels

  Margaret Thatcher (1988). “Britain and Europe: Text of the Prime Minister's Speech at Bruges on 20th September 1988”

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• I mean not to accuse any one, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty—we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others; and I therefore deprecate every kind of reflection against the various descriptions of people who are more immediately involved in this wretched business.

  William Wilberforce

  Mean, Reflection, People

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• Together in Britain we have lit a flame that the ages shall not extinguish. Guard that sacred flame my brother Blackshirts until it illuminates Britain and lights again the Paths of Mankind.

  Oswald Mosley

  Brother, Light, Flames

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• Tax time approaches, and Americans are as always paying H & R Block billions to help them save some of their wealth from their ravenous government. Pitiful, in a way: it underlines the grim but
  unacknowledged fact that the government is their enemy and they have to hire protection from it. But don't we enjoy 'self-government'? Well, if we have it, I'd hardly say we enjoy it. True, we aren't being taxed by the monarch of Great Britain, but our American-born rulers claim far more of our wealth than the British monarchs ever did.

  Joseph Sobran

  Block, Government, Self

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• I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget... we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat... All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness... We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that... Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.

  Winston Churchill

  Adversity, Broken, Darkness

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• I think 75% of the population of Great Britain are probably still de-churched. It's the younger end, the 25%, the merging generation, who have no church background at all.

  Nicky Gumbel

  Thinking, Church, Generations

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilization, and I would not have her (Britain) say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions.

  Francis Ledwidge

  Home, Army, Civilization

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• More Irishmen died fighting for Britain in World War I than died fighting against her in all of Ireland's bids for independence combined.

  David Frum

  War, Fighting, History

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• Much of the world today, including the United States, is still living in the social, cultural, and political aftermath of Britain's cultural achievements, its industrial revolution, its government of checks and balances, and its conquests around the world.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, History, Achievement

  Thomas Sowell (2008). “Conquests And Cultures: An International History”, p.67, Basic Books

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• Britain, the first industrial nation, had offered the world a remarkable public experiment in liberal, capitalist democracy whose success was premised upon free trade and world peace. Tuesday, 4 August 1914 brought that experiment to an abrupt halt.

  Kenneth O. Morgan

  August, Tuesday, History

  Kenneth O. Morgan (1984). “The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain”, p.522, Oxford University Press, USA

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

  Margaret Thatcher

  History, British History

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• Almost everywhere else in Europe, the more military the state, the stronger the king - except in Britain. Here it was parliament, not the monarchy, who signed the cheques. The longer the war went on, the stronger parliament became, as the purse on which it sat grew bigger and bigger.

  Simon Schama

  Kings, Military, War

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• The first modern propaganda agency was the British Ministry of Information a century ago, which secretly defined its task as "to direct the thought of most of the world" - primarily progressive American intellectuals, who had to be mobilized to come to the aid of Britain during World War I.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Agency, Tasks

  "How the Magna Carta became a Minor Carta, part 1" by Noam Chomsky, www.theguardian.com. July 24, 2012.

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• 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.

  Paul Cornell

  Media, America, Way

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• No, people back home don't realize why there is this kind of need for heroes in America at the moment. People in Britain don't really understand what's going on here. They don't understand why Camp X-ray exists.

  Jon Ronson

  Hero, Home, America

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