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
Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes. — Robert the Bruce
You British plundered half the world for your own profit. Let's not pass it off as the Age of Enlightenment. — Paddy Chayefsky
We are a country of Newton, Hodgson, and Turing. Ours is a country of ideas, invention and discovery and is truly a national history. — Rishi Sunak
Australian is British people that weren't doin good. — Theo Von
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
That's history. I say history because it happened in the past. — Murray Walker
History is the story of events, with praise or blame. — Cotton Mather
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
That Book, the Bible, accounts for the supremacy of England. England has become great & happy by the knowledge of the true God through Jesus Christ. — Queen Victoria
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
History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events. — A. J. P. Taylor
History is a tragedy, not a morality tale. — I. F. Stone
Short British History Quotes
Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role. — Dean Acheson
History is on every occasion the record of that which one age finds worthy of note in another. — Jacob Burckhardt
The history of any nation is not only a succession of events, but also a chain of ideas. — Pyotr Chaadayev
History is a set of lies agreed upon. — Napoleon Bonaparte
History is the land-mark by which we are directed into the true course of life. — Marcus Garvey
History is the zoology of the human race. — Franz Grillparzer
British History Image Quotes
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That's why we call it present.
Black History Month Quotes
you must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right. — Rosa Parks
If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander. — Mary Mcleod Bethune
Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionarys life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime. — Angela Davis
Every great dream begins with a dreamer. — Harriet Tubman
The United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the colored man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down. — Thurgood Marshall
Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations. — Mae Jemison
How are we going to get rid of racism? Stop talking about it! — Morgan Freeman
There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution — Frederick Douglass
My father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you. — Paul Robeson
What happened yesterday is history. What happens tomorrow is a mystery. What we do today makes a difference - the precious present moment. — Nick Saban
History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning. — Carter G. Woodson
Yesterday is a history; Tomorrow a mystery; Today is a gift; That's why we call it the present
To step into tomorrow's possibilities you must let go of yesterday's realities. Be careful of your choices between what was, is and will be. It is very hard to fully step into your destiny while you are still holding on to your history. — Christine Caine
A language is not just words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a language. — Noam Chomsky
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history? — Marcus Tullius Cicero
Don’t let your history interfere with your destiny.
Take a stand for what's right. Raise a ruckus and make a change. You may not always be popular, but you'll be part of something larger and bigger and greater than yourself. Besides, making history is extremely cool. — Samuel L. Jackson
Psychotherapy is what God has been secretly doing for centuries by other names; that is, he searches through our personal history and heals what needs to be healed - the wounds of childhood or our own self-inflicted wounds. — Thomas Keating
You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for. — David Attenborough
What is Money? will be regarded as the defining question of our time in history. — Robert Breedlove
English History Quotes
Many people do not know that Jesus did not speak Latin or English or Hebrew; he spoke Aramaic. But nobody knows that language. So we're talking about the Bible itself being a translation of a translation of a translation. And, in reality, it has affected people's lives in history. — Ngugi wa Thiong'o
English language is the most universal language in history, way more than the Latin of Julius Caesar. Its the most punderful language because its vocabulary has a certain critical mass that makes a lingo good for punning. — Richard Lederer
The principle of free speech is no new doctrine born of the Constitution of the United States. It is a heritage of English-speaking peoples, which has been won by incalculable sacrifice, and which they must preserve so long as they hope to live as free men. — Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
Those who tell the stories rule society.
Just heard Paul Scholes has retired, best I’ve ever played against by a mile. Most technically gifted player in english history. Legend. — Joey Barton
English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background. — David Crystal
Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language. — Daniel O'Connell
Live out of your imagination, not your history.
In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes. — Thomas Paine
Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, once a distant outpost of the pagan world, has become, through the preaching of the Gospel, a beloved and gifted portion of Christ's vineyard. — Pope John Paul II
Yes, they broke the law, but we can't deport them. Let's get over this pointing fingers and do something about that, whether it - they have to pay a fine, learn to speak English, the history, you can do that. And then you have to give visas for the skills we need. — Michael Bloomberg
The more you look back into English history, the more you are forced to the conclusion that alongside civility and the deeply held convictions about individual rights, the English have a natural taste for disorder. — Anna Pavlova
British Culture Quotes
In my view the European culture carries a very heavy responsibility for the creation of Israel... it is a product of both British and Stalin's anti- Semitism, but the British never faced their own complicity in its construction. — Tom Paulin
A genial and cultured Arab, Ameen Rihani, whose English is perfect and whose eloquence is astounding. He will discuss with equal eagerness and knowledge the merits of Picasso or Van Gogh, or the Zionist question, or the British achievements in Arabia. — Kenneth Williams
Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true. — Pete Townshend
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, today is a gift.
They [some countries] borrowed money to go acquire things, Indian power plants and Danish newspapers and British soccer teams. And they did it willy-nilly, and they themselves a story, that Icelandic history and culture and DNA leaves us very well-suited to being investment bankers. — Michael Lewis
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 Irish and British, they love satire, it's a large part of the culture. — Ben Nicholson
The theory that religion is a force for peace, does not fits the facts of it's history.
The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture. — Nelson Mandela
One of the things which separates British and American culture is the reverence for the flag in American culture. — Mark Lawson
American culture is kind of an international culture, isn't it? British culture is a bit more unique. I think funny things are sort of funny around the world, really. — David Walliams
Even though we were influenced by American culture and music, we like the rest of Europe have been colonized with that in the post-war period. At the same time there's a sense of dirty earthiness and Europeanness and Britishness in it as well. — Stephen Mallinder
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
Don't let your history interfere with your destiny.
Absolute monarchy,... is the easiest death, the true Euthanasia of the BRITISH constitution. — David Hume
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
If you're someone who genuinely believes that women don't deserve or aren't as much as men, you're like the plague. On the big history chart, you're the plague... It's just pointless and deadly.
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 Constitution Quotes
Like the British constitution, cricket was not made: it has 'grown'. — Neville Cardus
The American Constitution declares 'All men are born equal.' The British Socialist Party add: 'All men must be kept equal'. — Winston Churchill
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
We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
The British Constitution has always been puzzling and always will be. — Elizabeth II
Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle. — Thomas Hardy
The US Constitution serves the same function as the British royal family: it offers a comforting symbol of tradition and continuity, thereby masking a radical change in the actual system of power. — Joseph Sobran
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
[The British constitution] presumes more boldly than any other the good sense and the good faith of those who work it. — William E. Gladstone
The British Government very naturally would like to see in India the form of democratic constitutions it knows best and thinks best, under which the Government of the country is entrusted to one or other political party in accordance with the turn of elections. — Muhammad Ali Jinnah
One should study the Bible alongside other intellectual traditions - such as British constitutionalism, Enlightenment liberalism, and classical republicanism - in order to truly understand the American founding. — Daniel L Dreisbach
British Quotes
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
On the British Royal Divorce (Charles and Dianna). She is such a sad soul. It is good that it is over. Nobody was happy anyhow. I know I should preach family love and unity, but in their case. . . . — Mother Teresa
The shots that hit me are the last nails to the coffin of british rule in India. — Lala Lajpat Rai
The British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland. — James Connolly
There's something whimsical, satirical, and silly about British humor, which Americans have always enjoyed, and lots of us come over here because we have an audience of people who enjoy it. — Milo Yiannopoulos
The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen's lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire. — Winston Churchill
We always said that our struggle was not only against the British as representatives of colonialism, it was against all the evil that existed in India. The evil of the feudal system, the evil of the system based on caste, the evil of economic injustice. — Indira Gandhi
I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race... If there be a God, I think that what he would like me to do is paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible... — Cecil Rhodes
Yes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on. — James Connolly
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 Government Quotes
For over 30 years, the IRA showed that the British government could not rule Ireland on its own terms. — Gerry Adams
I gave my parole once, and it has been shamefully violated by the British Government; I shall not give another to people on whom no faith can be reposed. — Christopher Gadsden
The British and French governments have taken a strong stance against 'extremist content' online when addressing their approach to tackling extremism. — Maajid Nawaz
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
Our ability to make a decision about the declaration is hampered by the British government being reluctant to give us the clarification which we require. — Martin McGuinness
If the deaf are to hear, the sound has to be very loud. When we dropped the bomb, it was not our intention to kill anybody. We have bombed the British Government. The British must quit India and make her free. — Bhagat Singh
I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the action of two tarts. — Harold MacMillan
We did not lack for religious leaders to urge us into "godly" war [...]. All of this was part of a well-financed propaganda campaign on the part of British agents. As usual, the government of the United States was being "run" by the British Secret Intelligence Service. — Eustace Mullins
I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when the British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. — George Galloway
The British government needs to bring its system in Ireland under control. — Martin McGuinness
British Empire Quotes
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
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
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
The single most important thing you can do in business is to be yourself. — Sherry Lansing
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 compartment built to ‘seat 8 passengers; 4 British Troops, or 6 Indian Troops’ now carried only nine. — R.K. Narayan
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
I have not become the Kings First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. — Winston Churchill
Were you to read the British press today, you would learn that the British Empire never forgets its defeats. — Robert Trout
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
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
Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. — Gerald Kaufman
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. — Thomas B. Macaulay
The wisest fool in Christendom. — King James I
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
There is a golden thread which runs through British history of the individual, standing firm against tyranny and then of the individual participating in his society — Gordon Brown
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
The minds of youth are perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rime or to Great Britain; Boys are constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero, or debates upon some political question in the British Parliament. — Noah Webster
Girls must be thwarted early in life. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
In 1688 England contracted to the Netherlands the highest debt that one nation can owe to another. Herself not knowing how to recover her liberties, they were restored by men of the United Provinces. — George Bancroft
The unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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
Kenya is rapidly developing its industry and manufacturing, and its cultural identity as a new country. We had a humongous history pre-British, and when we were colonized and violently reshuffled, we had to decide who we were again. We couldn't rest on the stories and the cultures of our great-grandparents. — Wangechi Mutu
I was born in the '60s and grew up in the '70s - not exactly the best decade for food in British history. It was horrendous. It was a time when, as a nation, we excelled in art and music and acting and photography and fashion - all creative skills... all apart from cooking. — Heston Blumenthal
This book has been a catalogue of mistakes by politicians, moral and practical disasters which led to wars, enslavement and wretchedness on a scale which no previous age could have dreaded or dreamed of. — A. N. Wilson
Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep... For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that an' Chuck him out, the brute! But it's Saviour of his country, when the guns begins to shoot! — Rudyard Kipling
Two famous happy warriors - Reagan and his political soulmate, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - knew they were fighting their own ideological and external wars. But they did so with the sunny dispositions and positive outlooks of those who knew they were on the right side of history. — Monica Crowley
The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell. — Simon Schama
The great theme of modern British history is the fate of freedom. The 18th century inherits, after the Civil War, this very peculiar political animal. It's not a democracy, but it's not a tyranny. It's not like the rest of the world, the rest of Europe. There is a parliament, laws have to be made, elections are made. — Simon Schama
I'm somebody who is very, very proud to have been a part of the British film industry all my life and to have kind of been involved with a very important piece of British film history. — Daniel Radcliffe
British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question. — W. C. Sellar
At one level Great Britain at the beginning of the 18th century was like the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, both three and one, and altogether something of a mystery. — Linda Colley
Thirty resolute men in your House of Commons could save the world. — Felix Frankfurter
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
Nine English traditions out of ten date from the latter half of the nineteenth century. — C.P. Snow
The Victorians pioneered numbers of commercial rackets about which their descendants complain (the manufacturers of Bovril, it appears, were virtually official sponsors of the Boer War). — D. J. Taylor
We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us. — A. N. Wilson
The central fact of North American history is that there were fifteen British Colonies before 1776. Thirteen rebelled and two did not. — June Callwood
The strength and vitality of an empire is frequently due to the new aristocracy from the periphery. — Ronald Syme
Let valour end my life! — Walter Raleigh
The United States may have retained more of the intellectual imprint of the British 18th century than Britain itself. — William Rees-Mogg
I had carefully read the Balfour Declaration. I had familiarized myself with the history of the question of a Jewish homeland and the position of the British and the Arabs. I was skeptical, as I read over the whole record up to date, about some of the views and attitudes assumed by the 'striped-pants boys' in the State Department. — Harry S. Truman
It seems very strange ... that in the course of the world's history so obvious an improvement should never have been adopted. ... The next generation of Britishers would be the better for having had this extra hour of daylight in their childhood. — Arthur Conan Doyle
With their own record of killing 12 million American Indians and supporting slavery for four decades after the British abolished it, Americans wish to project their historical guilt on to someone else. — Andrew Roberts
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