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Quotes by British Authors
"You live by whatever rules you need to govern your life the best you think. Let's just try not to encroach."
"Fitness will be a major factor in the first race and I think that will play into the hands of drivers who have been racing recently, rather than people like me who haven't raced properly for a decade. I'am not one of the favourites to start with."
"The food we were given was no more than eatable, but the patron was not mean about drink; he allowed us two litres of wine a day each, knowing that if a plongeur is not given two litres he will steal three."
"In real terms, there is a greater disparity of earnings between the very rich and the very poor."
"There's never been any game plan or thread through my career. It's just happened that I've ricocheted from one interesting character to another."
"It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime."
"The Fukushima nuclear complex went on to become the worst man-made engineering disaster in all of human history, outside of war."
"I spent years growing up being told what my sexuality was."
"After all we did for Britain, selling that corduroy and making it swing, all we got was a bit of tin on a piece of leather."
"The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem."
"Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes."
"Yes, disappointment over perceived unfairness, injustice, promises not kept, tends to go hand in hand with increasing prosperity. Expectations are dashed. What can I say!"
"I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky."
"You, Jane, I must have you for my own--entirely my own."
"Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be."
"The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum."
"Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government."
"The more intense the nature of a man, the more readily will he find meditation, and the more successfully will he practice it."
"Admitting, however, for the sake of argument, that I am prime and sole minister in this country, am I, therefore, prime and sole minister of all Europe? Am I answerable for the conduct of other countries as well as for that of my own?"
"The biggest misconception people have about me is that I'm stupid."
"I was given talent, and if you are given it, it is your obligation to use it."
"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption."
"Your brand is the value and magic that's not in your bottle, body or box. It's the inspiration, incense, intent and impact before, within and beyond."
"Imperialism was genuinely popular among Athenians who would expect to share in its profits, even if only indirectly and collectively, and not to have to bear its burdens."
"When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration."
"If you look across the valley, you can see exactly what I mean: about four beautiful houses, and you think something is happening in each of them. It's like a mural."
"No, Jar Jar Binks was fine by me but probably went on a little bit too long. When they were in trouble and were battling, it should have been more serious and it became a bit too silly."
"To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance."
"Human beings are incredibly slow, Cosmic Ordering is incredibly fast!"
"A social democratic party without deep roots in the working class movement would quickly fade into an unrepresentative intellectual sect."
"God invented mankind because he loved silly stories."
"Occasionally I do things against my inner voice, but you really should go for the thing that touches you most-even if you don't quite know why it does."
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