Great Britain Quotes

• No two countries are identical, and obviously, there's a difference between a referendum on a very complex relationship between Great Britain and the rest of Europe, and a presidential election in the United States.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Europe, Two

  Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece in Joint Press Conference, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. November 15, 2016.

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• Great Britain would spend her last guinea to keep a navy superior to that of the United States or any other power.

  David Lloyd George

  Navy, United States, Lasts

  "The Intimate Papers of Colonel House. Volume IV". Book by Charles Seymour, 1928.

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• I will content myself, Mr. Speaker, with those principal motives to union; first, that we are in the rapids and must go on; next that our neighbours will not, on their side, let us rest supinely, even if we could do so from other causes; and thirdly, that by making the united colonies more valuable as an ally to Great Britain, we shall strengthen rather than weaken the imperial connection. (Cheers.

  Thomas D'Arcy McGee

  Cheer, Goes On, Unions

  Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1865). “Speeches and Addresses Chiefly on the Subject of British-American Union”, p.282, London : Chapman and Hall

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• From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection between Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish nation, and felt convinced, that while it lasted, this country would never be free or happy. In consequence, I determined to apply all the powers which my individual efforts could move, in order to separate the two countries.

  Theobald of Bec

  Country, Moving, Individual Effort

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• The immediate success of the war poem anthologies ... proved that the war had aroused in a new public an ear for contemporary verse ... There has never before, in the world's history, been an epoch which has tolerated and even welcomed such a flood of verse as has been poured forth over Great Britain during the last three years.

  Edmund Gosse

  War, Years, Poetry

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• The sun of her [Great Britain] glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her philosophy has crossed the Channel, her freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolution, whose issue is not given human foresight to scan.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Philosophy, Issues, Horizon

  Thomas Jefferson (1832). “Notes on the State of Virginia”, p.69

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• [I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Honesty, Government, House

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• The colleges of Edinburgh and Geneva as seminaries of science, are considered as the two eyes of Europe. While Great Britain and America give the preference to the former, all other countries give it to the latter.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Eye, College

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.109

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• 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

  Want, Opulence, Saws

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• Courtesy is not dead - it has merely taken refuge in Great Britain.

  Georges Duhamel

  Taken, Courtesy, British

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• In Great Britain the price of food is at a higher level than in any other country, and consequently, the British artisan labours at a disadvantage in proportion to the higher rate of his food.

  Joseph Hume

  Country, Levels, Proportion

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• I am the monarch of the sea,
  The Ruler of the Queen's Navee,
  Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants
  And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!

  Unknown

  Cousin, Queens, Aunt

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• Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Country, Law, Liberty

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• It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain; and I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Grace, Doubt, British

  'Letters to his Son' (1774) 18 November 1748

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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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• And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world.

  Jimmy Carter

  Thinking, Iraq, Support

  "Bush Is 'the Worst in History' In Foreign Relations, Carter Says". www.washingtonpost.com. May 20, 2007.

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• The ban doesn't have anything to do with Livestrong or my ability to work in [the cancer] community. Perhaps it speeds it up. I don't know the examples in Great Britain of athletes who have fallen. I know the examples in the United States - the Tiger Woods, the Michael Vicks, even the Bill Clintons - people who are still out there able to work.

  Lance Armstrong

  Cancer, Athlete, People

  Interview with Dan Roan, www.bbc.com. January 26, 2015.

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• A single glance at the map will make the reader acquainted with the position of the eastern coast of the island of Great Britain, as connected with the shores of the opposite continent.

  James F. Cooper

  Book, Islands, Opposites

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• [To the suggestion that Great Britain might someday want a Republic:] We'll go quietly.

  Queen Elizabeth II

  Suggestions, Republic, Want

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• Of all the sights and sounds which attracted me on my first arrival to live in London in the mid-thirties, one combined operation left a lingering, individual spell. I naturally went to Hyde Park to hear the orators, the best of the many free entertainments on offer in the capital. I heard the purest milk of the world flowing, then as now, from the platform of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

  Michael Foot

  Party, Sight, World

  Michael Foot (1980). “Debts of Honour”, London : Davis Poynter

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• The Führer 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.

  Franz Halder

  War, Yesterday, People

  Diary entry, spartacus-educational.com. July 14, 1940.

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• In 1860, sixty-three per cent of the couples married in Great Britain had families of four or more children; in 1925 only twenty per cent had more than four.

  Thomas Malthus

  Children, Couple, Twenties

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• [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?

  Trent Lott

  President, Prime, Ministers

  "A Jolly Good Show, but the Wrong Side of the Pond" by Dana Milbank, www.washingtonpost.com. June 12, 2007.

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• At one level Great Britain at the beginning of the 18th century was like the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, both three and one, and altogether something of a mystery.

  Linda Colley

  Christian, Doctrine, Three

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• A British imperium enabled Scots to feel themselves peers of the Ebglish in a way still denied them in an island kingdom. The language bears that out very clearly. The English and the foreign are still all too inclined to refer to the island of Great Britain as 'England'. But at no time have they ever customarily referred to an English empire.

  Linda Colley

  Islands, Peers, Kingdoms

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