British Imperialism Quotes

1. "I've never got on with the British press because they've always given me such a hard time. Once they build a band up they just want to do people down. They shouldn't concentrate on the colour of someone's shirt they should listen to the music."
Author: Andrew Eldritch

2. "Just as we do not today differentiate between the Roman Republic and the imperial period of the Julio-Claudians when we think of the Roman Empire, so in the future no one will bother to make a distinction between the British Empire-led and the American-Republic-led periods of English-speaking dominance between the late-eighteenth and the twenty-first centuries. It will be recognized that in the majestic sweep of history they had so much in common--and enough that separated them from everyone else--that they ought to be regarded as a single historical entity, which only scholars and pedants will try to describe separately."
Author: Andrew Roberts

3. "This is the beginning of the end (talking about the war)... Everyone was saying... But the British Prime Minister said, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Do you see the difference?"
Author: Anne Frank

4. "We only need to wear shoes because the British built roads which hurt our feet."
Author: Anthony Burgess

5. "Equally arresting are British pub names. Other people are content to dub their drinking establishment with pedestrian names like Harry's Bar and the Greenwood Lounge. But a Briton, when he wants to sup ale, must find his way to the Dog and Duck, the Goose and Firkin, the Flying Spoon, or the Spotted Dog. The names of Britain's 70,000 or so pubs cover a broad range, running from the inspired to the improbable, from the deft to the daft. Almost any name will do so long as it is at least faintly absurd, unconnected with the name of the owner, and entirely lacking in any suggestion of drinking, conversing, and enjoying oneself. At a minimum the name should puzzle foreigners-this is a basic requirement of most British institutions-and ideally it should excite long and inconclusive debate, defy all logical explanation, and evoke images that border on the surreal."
Author: Bill Bryson

6. "I have had my mother's wing of my genetic ancestry analyzed by the National Geographic tracing service and there it all is: the arrow moving northward from the African savannah, skirting the Mediterranean by way of the Levant, and passing through Eastern and Central Europe before crossing to the British Isles. And all of this knowable by an analysis of the cells on the inside of my mouth.I almost prefer the more rambling and indirect and journalistic investigation, which seems somehow less… deterministic."
Author: Christopher Hitchens

7. "How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, "Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much."
Author: David Mitchell

8. "Look, half the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were either in debt or bankrupt. The remaining half, most of them lost all their possessions. The only reason Monticello didn't get burned to the ground was that the British patrol missed the road."
Author: Eric Massa

9. "There is no cannibalism in the British navy, absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount."
Author: Graham Chapman

10. "I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish."
Author: Guillermo Cabrera Infante

11. "But I do not want to use Hungarian verses for British people."
Author: Gyorgy Ligeti

12. "Many historians regard him [Offa] as the most powerful Anglo-Saxon king before Alfred the Great. In the 780s he extended his power over most of Southern England. One of the most remarkable extantfrom King Offa's reign is a gold coin that is kept in the British Museum. On one side, it carries the inscription Offa Rex (Offa the King). But, turn it over and you are in for a surprise, for in badly copied Arabic are the words La Illaha Illa Allah ('There is no god but Allah alone'). This coin is a copy of an Abbasid dinarfrom the reign of Al-Mansur, dating to 773, and was most probably used by Anglo-Saxon traders. It would have been known even in Anglo-Saxon England that Islamic gold dinars were the most important coinage in the world at that time and Offa's coin looked enough like the original that it would have been readily accepted abroad."
Author: Jim Al Khalili

13. "The American head of state grew up with a mother on food stamps. The British head of state grew up with a mother on postage stamps. Is that a contrast that fills you with pride?"
Author: Johann Hari

14. "He walked to Brooks's, intending to drink a glass of port, eat a joint of beef, and read the Times. Buteven at his club, surrounded by all the trappings of the honorable British gentleman, he still longed for theforbidden fruit; he still hungered for the hot, sweet kisses of an Italian girl."
Author: Laura Lee Guhrke

15. "American science is much more organized, much more hierarchical than British science has been."
Author: Martin Fleischmann

16. "It is absolutely bedrock to the British Army's philosophy that a commanding officer is responsible for what goes on within his command."
Author: Mike Jackson

17. "While walking with a British coach.Why do you chuckle every time we walk by the theater that is showing "Free Willy"?"
Author: Neil Leckman

18. "With most British actors, it's amazing. I think they start with the character on the outside and work in."
Author: Norman Jewison

19. "I don't feel the cold. It's my British blood!"
Author: Olivia De Havilland

20. "To this day it cracks me up to think that my debut on national British television as a reporter ends with me turning a trick."
Author: RuPaul

21. "We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old."
Author: Winston Churchill

British Imperialism Quotes Pictures