#British Quotes

“If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea.”

“The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

“It is a curious fact about British Islanders, who hate drill and have not been invaded for nearly a thousand years, that as danger comes nearer and grows they become progressively less nervous; when it is imminent the are fierce, when it is mortal they are fearless.”

“I do not wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries; that what used to be called the submerged tenth can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their le.”

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

“Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'”

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

“By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. . . . I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence - which is a noble thing. Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat.”

“To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.”

“The British cook, for her iniquities, is a foolish woman who should be turned into a pillar of salt which she never knows how to use.”

“The British are weak in numbers, we are weak in spite of our numbers.”

“Our nonviolence vis-а-vis the British Government has been the nonviolence of the weak.”

“Non-co-operation is a movement intended to invite Englishmen to co-operate with us on honourable terms or retire from our land.”

“I claim to have been a lifelong and wholly disinterested friend of the British people.”

“It is equality of monotony which makes the strength of the British Isles.”