Britons Quotes:

Britons put up with, Americans fix, Canadians cope

- Margaret Mead

topic: Britons

The Britons are quite separated from all the world.

- Virgil

topic: World, Britons, Nationalism

Poor Britons, there is some good in them after all - they produced an oyster.

- Sallust

topic: Oysters, Culture, Poor, Britons

I'm embarrassed when I see Brits abroad; they have their tops off, wear flip flops, and shout at the top of their voices.

- Noel Gallagher

topic: Voice, People, Musician, Flip Flops, Britons

No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute.

- Paul Gallico

source: The New York Times, January 14, 1962.

topic: Rude, Insulting, Abuse, Britons, Verbal Abuse

Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton.

- George III

source: 'The King's Speech on Opening the Session' in 'Hansard' 18 November 1760, col. 942

topic: Country, Names, Glory, Britons

Listening to Britons dining out is like watching people play first-class tennis with imaginary balls.

- Margaret Halsey

topic: Class, Play, People, Dining Out, First Class

A Briton even in love should be A subject, not a slave!

- William Wordsworth

source: William Wordsworth (1854). “The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth”, p.97

topic: Love, Slave, Should, Britons

Why do Britons keep stabbing each other in August? Why do seaside hotels burn down in August? Why do children disappear in August, examinations get easier and Heathrow become the world's worst airport? The answer lies not in reality but in appearance. News editors abhor a vacuum. Half an hour of airtime and 10 pages of news must be filled each day, whatever the weather.

- Simon Jenkins

source: "The state has only aided our seasonal spates of thuggery" by Simon Jenkins, www.theguardian.com. August 21, 2007.

topic: Children, Lying, Reality, Stabbing, Britons

It would be wrong to interpret the growth of British national consciousness in this period in terms of a new cultural and political uniformity being resolutely imposed on the peripheries of the island by its centre. For many poorer and less literate Britons, Scotland, Wales and England remained more potent rallying calls than Great Britain, except in times of danger from abroad. And even among the politically educated, it was common to think in terms of dual nationalities, not a single national identity.

- Linda Colley

topic: Thinking, Islands, Scotland, National Identity, Periphery

Kitty Kelley's method, already perfected in her unauthorised and unflattering biographies of Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan, is to write bestsellers that take what she describes as an 'unblinking look' at their subjects - which might, of course, mean that her eyes are permanently open or permanently closed... the result is a work so bad that Britons cannot realise how fortunate they are in being unable to buy it. The great mistake with this book is not that it has been published in Britain, but that it has actually been published anywhere else.

- David Cannadine

topic: Mistake, Book, Writing, Kitties, Britons

Where are the rough brave Britons to be found With Hearts of Oak, so much of old renowned?

- Bill Vaughan

topic: Heart, Brave, England, Renowned, Oaks

It is plain and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankee, and operates differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton; ale must be drank in a fog and a drizzle.

- Herman Melville

source: Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.1232, Delphi Classics

topic: Yankees, Fog, Doe, Drizzle, Britons

BBC Radio is not so much an art or industry as it is a way of life . . . a mirror that reflects . . . the eccentricities, the looniness that make Britons slightly different from other humans.

- Morley Safer

topic: Art, Mirrors, Radio, Britons

The average Mexican lives longer now than the average Briton did in 1955. Infant mortality is lower today in Nepal than it was in Italy in 1951. The proportion of Vietnamese living on less than $2 a day has dropped from 90 per cent to 30 per cent in twenty years. The rich have got richer, but the poor have done even better.

- Matt Ridley

topic: Average, Years, Mexican, Infant Mortality, Nepal

Aspects of life here civility, courtesy, coziness have always bound Britons to their country . . . They are part of the British myth, along with lovely countryside, dogs and horses, rose gardens, the Armada, the Battle of Britain.

- R. W. Apple

topic: Country, Dog, Horse, Rose Garden, Battle Of Britain

The British have their own conception of what constitutes the typical American. He must have a flavor of the Wild West about him. He must do spectacular things. He must not be punctilious about dignity, decorum and other refinements characteristic of the real British gentleman. The Yankee pictured by the Briton must be a bustler. If he is occasionally flagrantly indiscreet in speech and action, then he is so much more surely stamped the genuine article. The most typical American the British ever set their eyes on was, in their judgment, Theodore Roosevelt.

- B. C. Forbes

topic: Real, Eye, America, Wild West, Theodore

Between now and then, after 43 years of European marriage, the whole body of legislation will therefore have to be disentangled. That entails a whole range of specific and very complex questions: what will be the future legal status of the millions of EU citizens in the UK and the millions of Britons on the continent?

- Jean-Claude Juncker

source: Source: www.businessinsider.com

topic: Years, Citizens, Body, Britons

I genuinely did not expect more than half our nation to choose to walk away from our long-term allies into the arms of our new friends Vladimir Putin, Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump. Or that they would do so without an economic plan, a trading strategy, or a credible leader, making the average Briton's future more uncertain than any time since the Blitz.

- Brian Reade

topic: Marine, Average, Long, Blitz, Britons

You perceive, do you not, that our national fairy tales reflect the inmost desires of the Briton and the Gaul?

- Rudyard Kipling

source: Rudyard Kipling (1970). “A book of words. Souvenirs of France. Something of myself”

topic: Desire, Fairy Tale, Tales, Britons

The Britons (say historians) were naked, civilized men, learned, studious, abstruse in thought and contemplation; naked, simple, plain in their acts and manners; wiser than after ages.

- William Blake

source: William Blake, David V. Erdman, Harold Bloom (1982). “The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake”, p.542, Univ of California Press

topic: Simple, Men, Age, Studious, Britons

A truly international field, no Britons involved.

- David Coleman

topic: Inspirational, Funny, Fields, Bloopers, Britons

Even the lowest of the Hindus, the Pariah, has less of the brute in him than a Briton in a similar social status.

- Swami Vivekananda

source: Swami Vivekananda (1974). “Awakened India”

topic: Social, Pariahs, Brutes, Social Status, Britons

Most Britons still lived and died without encountering anyone whose skin colour was different from their own. Slaves, in short, did not threaten, at least as far as the British at home were concerned. Bestowing freedom upon them seemed therefore purely an act of humanity and will, an achievement that would be to Great Britain's economic detriment, perhaps, but would have few other domestic consequences.

- Linda Colley

topic: Home, Achievement, Humanity, Great Britain, British History

In the last quarter of the 20th century, Britons have been understandably obsessed with the problem of having too little power in the world. In the third quarter of the 18th century, by contrast, their forebears were perplexed by the problem of having acquired too much power too quickly over too many people.

- Linda Colley

topic: People, World, Littles, Too Much Power, 18th Century

From the time of the North Briton of the unprincipled Wilkes , a notion has been entertained that the moral spine in Scotland is more flexible than in England. The truth however is, that an elementary difference exists in the public feelings of the two nations quite as great as in the idioms of their respective dialects. The English are a justice-loving people, according to charter and statute; the Scotch are a wrong-resenting race, according to right and feeling: and the character of liberty among them takes its aspect from that peculiarity.

- John Galt

topic: Character, Scotch, Race, Two Nations, Charter

If one takes pleasure in calling the gold standard a "barbarous relic," one cannot object to the application of the same term to every historically determined institution. Then the fact that the British speak English - and not Danish, German, or French - is a barbarous relic too, and every Briton who opposes the substitution of Esperanto for English is no less dogmatic and orthodox than those who do not wax rapturous about the plans for a managed currency.

- Ludwig von Mises

source: "The Gold Standard". Excerpt from chapter 17 of "Human Action, The Scholar's Edition", book by Ludwig von Mises, mises.org. 1949.

topic: Speak English, Gold, Facts, Esperanto, Danish

Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.

- Neil Gaiman

topic: Cities, Healthy, London, Keynes, Birmingham

Be Briton still to Britain true, Among oursel's united; For never but by British hands Maun British wrangs be righted.

- Robert Burns

topic: Hands, Patriotism, British, True Patriotism, Britons

So the British, of all ages, still walk the course. On trips to Florida or the American desert, they still marvel, or shudder, at the fleets of electric carts going off in the morning like the first assault wave at the Battle of El Alamein. It is unlikely, for some time, that a Briton will come across in his native land such a scorecard as Henry Longhurst rescued from a California club and cherished till the day he died. The last on its list of local rules printed the firm warning "A Player on Foot Has No Standing on the Course."

- Alistair Cooke

topic: Morning, Golf, Player, Electric Car, Britons

Other nations use 'force' we Britons alone use 'Might'.

- Evelyn Waugh

source: Scoop (1938) bk. 2, ch. 5

topic: Use, Might, Force, Britons

Britons seem to have given up on assimilating their Muslim population, with many British elites patting themselves on the back for their tolerance and multiculturalism.

- Linda Chavez

topic: Tolerance, Population, British, Multiculturalism, Britons

Representative institutions are as much a part of the true Briton as his language and his literature.

- Annie Besant

source: Annie Besant (1915). “How India Wrought for Freedom: The Story of the National Congress Told from Official Records”

topic: Literature, Language, Institutions, Britons

If Britons were left to tax themselves, there would be no schools, no hospitals, just a 500-mile-high statue of Diana, Princess of Wales

- Andy Zaltzman

source: "Not amused by Jimmy Carr? Check out these comedians instead" by Hazel Davis, www.theguardian.com. December 29, 2009.

topic: Princess, School, Would Be, Diana, Britons

England is no longer controlled by Britons, we are under the invisible Jewish dictatorship, a dictatorship that can be felt in every sphere of life

- Nesta Helen Webster

topic: Spheres, England, Invisible, Jewish Life, Britons

Moreover it is becoming the Britons, whether scientific or unscientific, who boast at all fitting occasions of their aptitude to rule the waves, should know something of the population of their saline empire, especially of those parts of it immediately in contact with their terrestrial domain, and the coasts of the Continent to which our United Kingdom appertains.

- Edward Forbes

source: Edward Forbes (1859). “The Natural History of the European Seas...”, p.3

topic: Ocean, Aptitude, Becoming, Ocean Exploration, Britons

I have a confession to make. Yesterday, I was responsible for the deaths of millions of Britons. What happened is that MI5 asked me to trail Mehan Asnik, a suspected terrorist, through the streets of London. He had escaped from our security services while infected with a plague virus. Tracking him on CCTV, I swear I had him but then, in the rush-hour bustle, lost him. When the secure mobile rang, it was Harry Pearce at Thames House, chewing me out for the slaughter that had been caused by my mistake.

- Mark Lawson

source: "TV matters: Spooks Interactive" by Mark Lawson, www.theguardian.com. October 18, 2007.

topic: Mistake, Yesterday, House, Thames, Chewing

We who have lived before railways were made belong to another world. It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth -- all these belong to the old period. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.

- William Makepeace Thackeray

topic: Horse, Father, Knights, Ancient World, Old World

When we fled from the oppressions of kings and parliaments in Europe, to found this great Republic in America, we brought with us the laws and the liberties, which formed a part of our heritage as Britons.

- Caleb Cushing

topic: Kings, America, Europe, Britons

The British public like a Briton with personality, someone who comes out on court and isn't dour and down on themselves.

- Jo Durie

topic: Personality, Court, British, Britons

I propose that 100,000 degenerate Britons should be forcibly sterilized and others put in labour camps to halt the decline of the British race.

- Winston Churchill

source: Winston Churchill's remarks as Home Secretary in a 1910 Departmental Paper (the original document is in the collection of Asquith's papers at the Bodleian Library in Oxford); later quoted in Clive Ponting "Churchill", 1995.

topic: Race, Degenerates, Decline, Britons

The better class of Briton likes to send his children away to school until they're old and intelligent enough to come home again. Then they're too old and intelligent to want to.

- Malcolm Bradbury

source: Malcolm Bradbury (2012). “Rates of Exchange”, p.184, Pan Macmillan

topic: Children, Home, School, Britons

Britons are good, though often brutal, colonists where they come into relations with entirely uncivilized tribes whose past is so remote as to be forgotten. But they trample with their heavy boots over the sensitive, delicate susceptibilities of an ancient, highly civilized and cultured nation, such as India.

- Annie Besant

topic: Past, India, Boots, Susceptibility, Colonists