You British plundered half the world for your own profit. Let's not pass it off as the Age of Enlightenment. — Paddy Chayefsky
Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role. — Dean Acheson
A century earlier, the British had learned they needed forward bases and coaling stations from which to project and protect their naval power. — Tim Marshall
Can't' will be the epitaph of the British Empire - unless we wake up in time. — Oswald Mosley
Now, with Britain in decline, the Americans looked lasciviously at the British assets and said, ‘Nice bases — we’ll have them.’ — Tim Marshall
Australian is British people that weren't doin good. — Theo Von
The truth is that neither British nor American imperialism was or is idealistic. It has always been driven by economic or strategic interests. — Charley Reese
The British brand is so popular particularly in the US that they put the union jack flag on top of beer bottles because it sells. — Liz Truss
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. — Winston Churchill
I have not become the Kings First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. — Winston Churchill
While we remember that we are contending against brothers and fellow subjects, we must also remember that we are contending in this crisis for the fate of the British Empire. — John Burgoyne
A great empire and little minds go ill together. — Edmund Burke
It is the clash of two different worlds that makes British-ness unique - we have an aristocratic, noble history, but it is always contrasted with something rebellious. — Christopher Bailey
The biggest looters are the British Museum. — Lowkey
We (The British) have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy. — Winston Churchill
A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges. — Benjamin Franklin
Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself. — Publilius Syrus
The shots that hit me are the last nails to the coffin of british rule in India. — Lala Lajpat Rai
British Empire Image Quotes
Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure.
British Rule Quotes
Yes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on. — James Connolly
Why should we not form a secret society with but one object, the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for making the Anglo Saxon race but one Empire? What a dream, but yet it is probable; it is possible. — Cecil Rhodes
For over 30 years, the IRA showed that the British government could not rule Ireland on its own terms. — Gerry Adams
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
The long-established and noble rule of Law, one of the greatest products of the character and tradition of British history, has suffered a deadly blow. Blackmail has become respectable. — Robert Menzies
The fierce pulsation of resurgent pride that disclaims servitude may one day cease to throb in the heart of Ireland - but the heart of Ireland will that day be dead. While Ireland lives, the brain and the brawn of her manhood will strive to destroy the last vestige of British rule in her territory — Thomas MacDonagh
That more than 90 per cent of the Indian population should continue to be illiterate even after 175 years of British rule in this country is an intolerable situation which calls for immediate action. — Syama Prasad Mukherjee
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. — Mahatma Gandhi
If there is a single trait in our character that has historically set us apart from other nations, it is our determination to limit the authority of those who rule over us. — Billy Bragg
There are no Rohingya among the races [in Burma]. We only have Bengalis who were brought for farming [during British rule]. — Thein Sein
Today, in British education, we don't have that kind of freedom. Now there are many regulations, many rules, and bureaucracies in the education system. So, it doesn't have the flexibility that it had in the '60s, '70s, '80s. — Michael Craig-Martin
British History Quotes
My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time... Go home and get a nice quiet sleep. — Neville Chamberlain
We fight to exist. Personally, I am not ashamed of fighting to exist. We are doing no very extraordinary thing to fight simply because we do not wish to be enslaved or exterminated. — Donald Woods Winnicott
Most of our people have never had it so good. — Harold MacMillan
I went back in British history. Some 204 people died there after a mine collapsed in 1838. In 1866, 361 miners died in Britain. In an explosion in 1894, 290 people died there. — Sayings
Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. — Gerald Kaufman
As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. — William E. Gladstone
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. — Thomas B. Macaulay
No medieval monarch in the whole of British history ever had such power as every modern British Prime Minister has in his or her hands. Nor does any American President have power approaching this — Tony Benn
What astounds me about the history of the British Navy is how cheaply we have policed the world for 300 years. — Ernest Bevin
Empire Quotes
We been on the road for 18 hours... I need a bath, some chow... and then you and me sit down, and we talk about who dies,eh? — Al Capone
His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. — Idi Amin
For what fortress, what city, in the wide extent of the Roman empire, can hope to exist, secure and impregnable, if it is our pleasure that it should be erased from the earth? — Attila the Hun
Haters are my favorite. I´ve built an empire with the bricks they´ve thrown at me. Keep on hating. — CM Punk
To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature; contumely to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance; and finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice. — John Knox
Jordan has a strange, haunting beauty and a sense of timelessness. Dotted with the ruins of empires once great, it is the last resort of yesterday in the world of tomorrow. I love every inch of it. — King Hussein I
The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it. — Robert E. Lee
With Heaven's aid I have conquered for you a huge empire. But my life was too short to achieve the conquest of the world. That task is left for you — Genghis Khan
It is the soldier and the army, not parliamentary majorities and decisions, that have welded the German Empire together. I put my trust in the army. — Wilhelm II
The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen's lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire. — Winston Churchill
Great Britain Quotes
Great Britain provided time; the United States provided money and Soviet Russia provided blood. — Joseph Stalin
That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. — Richard Henry Lee
Whoever would have guessed that in the land of cheap sausages and mashed potatoes there could be such a change which would actually bring the French from Paris every weekend to invade Britain en masse to eat great food and drink great wine. — Robin Leach
In Great Britain, an author published a book in which he claimed that Jesus Christ had children. Such statements don't trigger civil unrest and bloodshed in Europe. But write similar statements about Islam in Syria and you might see bloody uprisings. — Bashar al-Assad
It may be easily shown, and is of no small significance, that the two great ideas of which the Anglo-Saxon is the exponent are having a fuller development in the United States than in Great Britain. — Josiah Strong
In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success. — Isoroku Yamamoto
America's health care system is second only to Japan, Canada, Sweden, Great Britain, well ... all of Europe. But you can thank your lucky starts we don't live in Paraguay! — Matt Groening
In Britain, we don’t appreciate people who have been a major success in sport. It is grudgingly given to you. — Stephen Hendry
I've always held the view that great states need strategic space. I mean, George Washington took his space from George III. Britain took it from just about everybody. Russia took all of Eastern Europe. Germany's taken it from everywhere they can, and China will want its space too. — Paul Keating
Great Britain have won 40% of their medals in cycling. If only there was snooker, darts and a dog show. — Jim Lampley
British Monarchy Quotes
I turned down the OBE because its not a club you want to join when you look at the villains whove got it. Its all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest. — Ken Loach
I believe that the visit of the Queen to the United States is an admirable occasion to produce an historical, truthful, sincere, genuine analysis of how the British Monarchy evolved into its present situation. — Malcolm Muggeridge
Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution - perhaps the first modern political institution. — Adam Gopnik
Absolute monarchy,... is the easiest death, the true Euthanasia of the BRITISH constitution. — David Hume
I respect the British a lot - their history, their past, their culture. I think it's beautiful, what they have with the monarchy. — Jean-Marc Vallee
The Monarchy...is the secret well from which the flourishing institution of British Snobbery draws its nourishment — Kingsley Martin
No. I am not a royalist. Not at all. I am definitely a republican in the British sense of the word. I just don't see the use of the monarchy though I'm fierce patriot. I'm proud proud proud of being English, but I think the monarchy symbolizes a lot of what was wrong with the country. — Daniel Radcliffe
There is not a power in Europe, no not even Bonaparte's that is so unlimited [as the British monarchy]. — Charles James Fox
The Billy Carter of the British monarchy. — Robert Lacey
Vernon Bogdanor's account The Monarchy and the Constitution is written as much in the shadow of Edmund Burke as it is of Walter Bagehot. He stresses the organic development of the British constitution, prefers evolution to revolution, and thinks stability is better than strife. — David Cannadine
British Army Quotes
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash. — Winston Churchill
If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum. — Arthur Eddington
I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilization, and I would not have her (Britain) say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions. — Francis Ledwidge
The Australian divisions and the New Zealanders had become what they were to remain for the rest of the war the spearhead of the British Army — John Terraine
The builders of the British Indian Empire have patiently built its four pillars-the European interests, the army, the Indian princes and the communal divisions. — Mahatma Gandhi
It is now conceded that all idea of British intervention is at an end... I want to hug the army of the Potomac. I want to get the whole army of Vicksburg drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small man and lick him. — Henry Adams
Yeah. Floyd is his batman." His what?" Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant." You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don't make you money than anybody I know. — Robert B. Parker
My Mother is Swedish and my Father is Scottish, he played for Charlton in the 1960's and was in the Army, he captained the British forces team. We then moved to S.A. because a lot of players did that at the time. — Richard Gough
I was a section commander in the parachute regiment [in the British army]. — Scott Raab
British Navy Quotes
It seems amazing that the Navy SEALs managed to get inside the compound and shoot Osama so efficiently. I can only imagine they were told that the mission was to rescue a bearded British hostage and he must be brought out alive. — Frankie Boyle
I've been a Danish prince, a Texas slave-dealer, an Arab sheik, a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, and a Yankee navy lieutenant in my time, among other things, and none of 'em was as hard to sustain as my lifetime's impersonation of a British officer and gentleman. — George MacDonald Fraser
The head of a ship however has not always an immediate relation to her name, at least in the British navy. — William Falconer
In my opinion the greatest advantage we can at present expect from our Navy; for at this early period We can not expect to have a Navy to cope with the British. — William Whipple
Military power tends to be a function of economic power, and the British Navy was the essential capability for establishing the imperial sway - which was attuned to furnish the raw materials for the British manufacturing ascendance. So they were mutually reinforcing. — Charles R. Morris
I'm obsessed with the Victorian era and the British Royal Navy... I'd love to play a troubled sailor or captain or a boatman on a three masted ship. — Nick Offerman
The Ottoman Empire, Persians, Alexander the Great, and the Umayyad dynasty all divided Iraq into three administrative regions based on religion and ethnicity. The British looked at the same area and combined the three into one, resulting in a mess. — Tim Marshall
When the Ottoman Empire began to collapse in 1916, the British drew a crude line called Sykes-Picot across a map of the Middle East that represented a secret agreement with France to divide the region into two spheres of influence — north was to be under French control, south under British. Prior to Sykes-Picot — Tim Marshall
The single most important thing you can do in business is to be yourself. — Sherry Lansing
In recent times, European nations, with the use of gunpowder and other technical improvements in warfare, controlled practically the whole world. One, the British Empire, brought under one government a quarter of the earth and its inhabitants. — John Boyd Orr
The compartment built to ‘seat 8 passengers; 4 British Troops, or 6 Indian Troops’ now carried only nine. — R.K. Narayan
I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India. — Muhammad Iqbal
The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomyand freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity byallegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal. — George VI
The Jews might become the dynamite that will blow up the British Empire. — Ze'ev Jabotinsky
Were you to read the British press today, you would learn that the British Empire never forgets its defeats. — Robert Trout
If we don't stop behaving like the British Empire, we will end up like the British Empire. — Pat Buchanan
No, men and women of the Irish race, we shall not fight for England. We shall fight for the destruction of the British Empire and the construction of an Irish republic. — James Larkin
Every historian has a vested interest. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was not about the Roman but the British empire. What price the truth? — Peter Greenaway
If you want something bad enough, you've got to make a bold move. George Washington, took on the British Empire. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Ken Titus taped a hotel key to his underwear to score with an airport security guard. — Christopher Titus
To destroy Christianity, we must first destroy the British Empire. — Karl Marx
It was on this day that the Bahamas declared independence. Before that they were a British colony. The British Empire lost Canada and the Bahamas, to name just a couple. Britain's been dumped more times than Taylor Swift. But did they go writing whining songs about it? No. — Craig Ferguson
Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization - this tea ritual and the detective novel. — Ayn Rand
A British imperium enabled Scots to feel themselves peers of the Ebglish in a way still denied them in an island kingdom. The language bears that out very clearly. The English and the foreign are still all too inclined to refer to the island of Great Britain as 'England'. But at no time have they ever customarily referred to an English empire. — Linda Colley
I feel like Ive been engaged to the British Empire since 1980 and tonight you have given me the ring knighthood. — Steven Spielberg
Canada evolved within the British Empire: it inherited the Parliamentary system, the Cabinet system and all the other features of the British constitutional system which had been in place, for the most part, for several centuries before Canada was even thought of. — Stockwell Day
Using the passive voice is always very helpful. Mind you, a lot of that propaganda English emanates from here. The British establishment has always used the passive voice. It's been a weapon of discourse so those who committed terrible acts in the old empire could not be identified. — John Pilger
I believe in the acceptance of personal responsibility, freedom of choice, and the British Empire, which took freedom and the rule of law to countries which would never have known it otherwise. — Margaret Thatcher
The sun never sets on the British Empire. But it rises every morning. The sky must get awfully crowded. — Steven Wright
Every empire suffers from hubris, arrogance and condescension, and therefore a moral blindness. That's true of the American empire, it was true of the British Empireearlier, and it will certainly be true of the Chinese Empire in the future. — Cornel West
Not only the priceless heritage of our fathers, of our seamen, of our Empire builders is being thrown away in a war that serves no British interests - but our alliance leader Stalin dreams of nothing but the destruction of that heritage of our fathers? — John Amery
The loss of India would mark and consummate the downfall of the British Empire. That great organism would pass at a stroke out of life into history.From such a catastrophe there could be no recovery. — Lord Randolph Churchill
The strength and vitality of an empire is frequently due to the new aristocracy from the periphery. — Ronald Syme
In India, as we saw, the Sepoy Mutiny led to a vast reorganization of British colonialism in the area, sending out a viceroy from London and before too long, Queen Victoria was proclaimed “Empress of India,” with this great empire, ruling over maharajahs and other local potentates. — Webster Tarpley
The Queen of England gave me the honor of the Order of the British Empire for working with children. — Henry Winkler
The British Empire was so vast and so powerful, the sun would never set on it. This is how big it was, yet these 13 little scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire, liberty or death. — Malcolm X
Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves. — Tony Benn
I think deep down, this planet yearns for the days of the British Empire again. They long once more to be treated that badly, that politely. We did far worse things than you can possibly dream of, but we did it with that certainly gentlemanly swagger... Dreadfully sorry, but we seem to have crushed your entire continent's infrastructure. Allow me to make it up to you by offering you a job 4,000 miles away. No, no, I insist. — John Oliver
It is with deep grief I watch the clattering down of the British Empire with all its glories and all the services it has rendered to mankind. — Winston Churchill
If the British Empire is fated to pass from life into history, we must hope it will not be by the slow process of dispersion and decay, but in some supreme exertion for freedom, for right and for truth. — Winston Churchill
Tea? Good God, no. It's mud. How the British ever built an empire drinking the filthy stuff is beyond me. And if we carry on drinking it, I've no doubt that the empire won't last much longer. No, a civilized person drinks coffee. — Charlie Higson
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour. — Winston Churchill
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