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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."
"News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising."
"What's the book like?""Well, some of it's twaddle, but mostly it's just piffle. Cheers!"
"Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions."
"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."
"If we lose the war in the air we lose the war and we lose it quickly."
"The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs."
"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."
"Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming."
"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."
"As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods."
"American troops have not only occupied Ulster but are arriving in increasing numbers in England."
"How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask-half our great theological and metaphysical problems-are like that."
"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 don't dislike babies, though I think very young ones rather disgusting."
"Without Hitler, the State of Israel probably would not exist today. To that extent he was probably the Jews' greatest friend."
"The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity."
"I did not fully understand the dread term 'terminal illness' until I saw Heathrow for myself."
"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!"
"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more priviledged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."
"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 believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator."
"Travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy, and it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast countries still very imperfectly explored."
"The logic of Palladian architecture presented an aesthetic formula which could be applied universally."
"And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it."
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity."
"God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything."
"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite."
"Discrimination against Jews can be read in Thomas Aquinas, and insults against Jews in Martin Luther."
"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."
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