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Quotes by British Authors
"People ask 'do you make a conscious effort not to swear?' - if you're doing silly stuff you're not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway."
"One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes."
"The passage of time is simply an illusion created by our brains."
"Without Hitler, the State of Israel probably would not exist today. To that extent he was probably the Jews' greatest friend."
"American troops have not only occupied Ulster but are arriving in increasing numbers in England."
"To know ourselves, is agreed by all to be the most useful Learning; the first Lessons, therefore, given us ought to be on that Subject."
"I love this country, I love these people, though I can't say I love their politicians. People are always nicer than politicians, but here, you can mark that difference up a hundredfold."
"I work with the options I have in front of me and my reasons for choosing a job can vary enormously depending on the circumstances. Sometimes I take a job because it's a group of people I'm dying to work with, and sometimes it can be a desire to shake things up a bit and not to take myself too seriously."
"If we lose the war in the air we lose the war and we lose it quickly."
"They can certainly expect to be very impressed with the technical aspects of the show, fooled and led up the garden path by the story and ultimately have a jolly good laugh!"
"I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator."
"I really like the Observer. I think I'd love to have a column with a broad reach that would enable me to do some proper reporting, but keep it on sort of a humorous level. I've always had a very happy experience writing for them."
"Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
"It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."
"However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbours, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in a war simply on her account."
"A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection."
"I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite."
"The logic of Palladian architecture presented an aesthetic formula which could be applied universally."
"Time is everything; five minutes make the difference between victory and defeat."
"Now being upon the haunches (as he necessarily must be in this case) is it impossible but he must be light in hand, because no horse can be rightly upon his haunches without being so."
"The very idea of true patriotism is lost, and the term has been prostituted to the very worst of purposes. A patriot, sir! Why, patriots spring up like mushrooms!"
"It is a curious thing, but I have been right in everything I have done and said in my life."
"I did not fully understand the dread term 'terminal illness' until I saw Heathrow for myself."
"A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer."
"Discrimination against Jews can be read in Thomas Aquinas, and insults against Jews in Martin Luther."
"Television? The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it."
"Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future."
"The curtains would open and it would be just her standing in some ludicrous pose, like Aphrodite."
"I can establish the expectation of retributive justice. Have we done that? No."
"Post-modernism is modernism with the optimism taken out."
"Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile."
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