Peter Ustinov Quotes

The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.

Laughter ... the most civilized music in the world.

Monica Seles: I'd hate to be next door to her on her wedding night.

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.

If you're going to be a prisoner of your own mind, the least you can do is make sure it's well furnished.

Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.

Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.

Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.

To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness.

To live like a poor man is only fun when you are rich.

What is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn?

Sex is a conversation carried out by other means.

If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.

The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.

There is no question but that if Jesus Christ, or a great prophet from another religion, were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners.

Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox - affection, friendship, love.

It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

I believe that the Jews have made a contribution to the human condition out of all proportion to their numbers: I believe them to be an immense people. Not only have they supplied the world with two leaders of the stature of Jesus Christ and Karl Marx, but they have even indulged in the luxury of following neither one nor the other.

Life is unfair but remember sometimes it is unfair in your favour.

Artificial glamor-false eyelashes, that sort of thing-usually is put on to hide a vacuum. The most beautiful face can only look vacuous if it masks an empty head.

I am convinced that it is of primordial importance to learn more every year than the year before. After all, what is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn.

The stupidity of a stupid man is mercifully intimate and reticient, while the stupidity of an intellectual is cried from the rooftops.

The older I get, the more people listen to me - even though I say the same as always.

The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.

Love is an act of endless forgiveness.

It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.

I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.

By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.

Did you know that the worldwide food shortage that threatens up to five hundred million children could be alleviated at the cost of only one day, only one day, of modern warfare.

British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive it.

If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.

At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we're all Generals.

Only some of us never grow out of it.

People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

The French and the British are such good enemies that they can't resist being friends.

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.

Unfortunately, a superabundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares

World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable;

and when it comes, it will appeal to patriotism in its truest sense,in its only sense, the patriotism of humans who love their national heritages so deeply that they wish to preserve them in safety for the common good.

Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.

The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.

I can never forgive God for having invented the French

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

The stupidity of a stupid man is exercised in a restricted field;

the stupidity of an intelligent man has a much wider diffusion, and a far greater effect, aided as it is by the element of surprise.

Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.