British Quotes

They were the citizens of free and independent nations, united by their duty to their compatriots and to millions yet unborn. There were the British, whose nobility and fortitude saw them through the worst of Dunkirk and the London Blitz. The full violence of Nazi fury was no match for the full grandeur of British pride. Thank you. There were the Canadians, whose robust sense of honor and loyalty compelled them to take up arms alongside Britain from the very, very beginning. There were the fighting Poles, the tough Norwegians, and the intrepid Aussies.

On behalf of the British people I salute the skill and courage which have brought man to the moon. May this endeavour increase the knowledge and well-being of mankind.

The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.

I cannot tell you whether we are going to hit them in Norway, or through the Low Countries, or in France, or through Sardinia or Sicily, or through the Balkans, or through Poland - or at several points simultaneously. But I can tell you that no matter where and when we strike by land, we and the British and the Russians will hit them from the air heavily and relentlessly.

The British people and their Grecian allies need ships; from America they will get ships. They need planes; from America they will get planes. Yes, from America they need food, and from America they will get food. They need tanks and guns and ammunition and supplies of all kinds; from America they will get tanks and guns and ammunition and supplies of all kinds.

The sight of wounded and whipped Zulus, mercilessly abandoned by their British persecutors, so appalled him that he turned full circle from his admiration for all things British to celebrating the indigenous and ethnic. He resuscitated the culture of the colonized and the fullness of Indian resistance against the British; he revived Indian handicrafts and made these into an economic weapon against the colonizer in his call for swadeshi - the use of one's own and the boycott of the oppressor's products, which deprive the people of their skills and their capital.

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.

On the first day of school, my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name and said that from thenceforth that was the name we would answer to in school. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education.

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.

A fearful game of chess proceeds from check to mate by which the unhappy players seem to be inexorably bound...the fact that the British Empire stands invincible, and that Nazidom is still being resisted, will kindle again the spark of hope in the breasts of hundreds of millions of down-trodden or despairing men and women throughout Europe, and far beyond its bounds, and that from these sparks there will presently come a cleansing and devouring flame.

The Frogs are getting all they can for nothing, and we are getting nothing for all we can.

I proceeded to a joint review of the British and American forces. There was a long march past in threes, during which the tune "United States Marines" bit so deeply into my memory that I could not get it out of my head.

War is a hard school, but the British, once compelled to go there, are attentive pupils.

There are two supreme obligations which rest upon a British government. They are of equal importance. One is to strive to prevent a war, and the other is to be ready if war should come.

War is horrible, but slavery is worse, and you may be sure that the British people would rather go down fighting than live in servitude.

Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence, which is a noble thing.

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

The maxim of the British people is 'business as usual.'

The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.

These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler's invasion plans. He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city ... Little does he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough fibre of the Londoners.