British Quotes

• If there is to be any hope of prosperity for this country it is by reversing that policy which made us simply the kitchen garden for supplying the British with cheap food.

  Eamon de Valera

  Country, Garden, Kitchen

  12 Copy quote

• The most conservative man in this world is the British trade unionist when you want to change him.

  Ernest Bevin

  Change, Men, Political

  Speech, 8 Sept. 1927, in Report of Proceedings of the Trades Union Congress (1927) p. 298

  16 Copy quote

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• I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the action of two tarts.

  Harold MacMillan

  Government, Two, Determined

  Comment on the Profumo affair, July 1963, in Anthony Sampson 'Macmillan' (1967) p. 243

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• There is not a single injustice in Northern Ireland that is worth the loss of a single British soldier or a single Irish citizen either.

  James Callaghan

  Loss, British Soldiers, Citizens

  13 Copy quote

• I have done my time living on the run. I'm British and I want to come home.

  Gary Glitter

  Running, Home, Done

  4 Copy quote

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

  Roland Joffe

  Food, Sitting Down, Meals

  6 Copy quote

• I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish

  Guillermo Cabrera Infante

  Writing, Literature

  4 Copy quote

• A British pressing with a compilation of the best stuff really, I mean actually not only that but, these were all kind of semi hits for the people on it in America.

  Eric Clapton

  Mean, America, People

  4 Copy quote

• The British electors will not vote for a man who does not wear a hat.

  Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook

  Hate, Men, Political

  5 Copy quote

• In 1973 we moved to the British Isle of Man, and I put my first band together for one year, named Melody Fair.

  Andy Gibb

  Men, Years, Together

  7 Copy quote

• I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.

  Clement Attlee

  Wine, Thinking, Bottles

  'Hansard' 24 October 1950, col. 2705

  6 Copy quote

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• The British have always coped without becoming a dictatorship.

  Frederick Forsyth

  Literature, Becoming, Dictatorship

  6 Copy quote

• Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence, which is a noble thing.

  Winston Churchill

  Ordinary, Essentials, Noble

  My Early Life ch. 2 (1930)

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• 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.

  Payne Stewart

  Sports, Team, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

• The British are special. The world knows it. In our innermost thoughts we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth.

  Tony Blair

  Special, World, Earth

  "Full text of Tony Blair's resignation speech". Times Online, May 10, 2007.

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• No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Government, Decision, Faces

  The Guns of August ch. 9 (1962)

  4 Copy quote

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• I gave my parole once, and it has been shamefully violated by the British Government; I shall not give another to people on whom no faith can be reposed.

  Christopher Gadsden

  Government, People, Giving

  60 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jonny Lee Miller

  New York, Dirty, Humor

  5 Copy quote

• We embrace policies that have, first and foremost, the continued survival of the British people at their core, and in that respect I think we are beyond left and right.

  Steve Blake

  Thinking, People, Survival

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• Once, when a British Prime Minister sneezed, men half a world away would blow their noses. Now when a British Prime Minister sneezes nobody else will even say 'Bless You'.

  Bernard Levin

  Blow, Men, Noses

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• 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.

  Victoria Wood

  Funny, Sex, Couple

  55 Copy quote

• It can be said of him, when he departed he took a Man's life with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of Time.

  John Keats

  Life, Men, Departed

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• 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.

  Helmut Schmidt

  Men, Allies, Interest

  14 Copy quote

• Sir Oswald Mosley thought his job is not just keep Britain from going to war with his beloved Germany, he saw it as his job to organize a complementary fascist movement inside the U.K. So, he formed this organization as the British Union of Fascists in `32. In 1936, they changed their name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists

  Rachel Maddow

  Jobs, War, Names

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• 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.

  Mick Jagger

  Years, People, Loving You

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