United Kingdom Quotes

“Americans may say they love our accents (I have been accused of sounding 'like Princess Di') but the more thoughtful ones resent and rather dislike us as a nation and people, as friends of mine have found out by being on the edge of conversations where Americans assumed no Englishmen were listening.

And it is the English, specifically, who are the targets of this. Few Americans have heard of Wales. All of them have heard of Ireland and many of them think they are Irish. Scotland gets a sort of free pass, especially since Braveheart re-established the Scots' anti-English credentials among the ignorant millions who get their history off the TV.”
― Peter Hitchens

“The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.”
― Charles Moore

“London is one of the world's centres of Arab journalism and political activism. The failure of left and right, the establishment and its opposition, to mount principled arguments against clerical reaction has had global ramifications. Ideas minted in Britain – the notion that it is bigoted to oppose bigotry; 'Islamophobic' to oppose clerics whose first desire is to oppress Muslims – swirl out through the press and the net to lands where they can do real harm.”
― Nick Cohen

“Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper and lower classes unless they set each other a good example. But I shouldn't pretend that the consensus itself was any of my concern. It was absurd and slightly despicable, in the first decade of Thatcher and Reagan, to hear former and actual radicals intone piously against 'the politics of confrontation.' I suppose that, if this collection has a point, it is the desire of one individual to see the idea of confrontation kept alive.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports

“Today, as a result of the policy of Macmillan's Government, Great Britain presents in the United Nations the face of Pecksniff and in Katanga the face of Gradgrind.”
― Conor Cruise O'Brien

“This historic general election, which showed that the British are well able to distinguish between patriotism and Toryism, brought Clement Attlee to the prime ministership. In the succeeding five years, Labor inaugurated the National Health Service, the first and boldest experiment in socialized medicine. It took into public ownership all the vital (and bankrupted) utilities of the coal, gas, electricity and railway industries. It even nibbled at the fiefdoms and baronies of private steel, air transport and trucking. It negotiated the long overdue independence of India. It did all this, in a country bled white by the World War and subject to all manner of unpopular rationing and controls, without losing a single midterm by-election (a standard not equaled by any government of any party since). And it was returned to office at the end of a crowded term.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“What if, I never tire of asking, we said 'Secret Council' instead of the archaic and therefore cuddly 'Privy Council'?”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Let the muck of monarchy end with the queen.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“Genghis Miliband roars up to the despatch box like a caged donkey.”
― Andy Zaltzman

“Nice mix of Tory MPs saying this issue shouldn't be used for petty political pointscoring, & Tory MPs trying to score petty political points.”
― Andy Zaltzman

“Everything in London is great and adorable,
apart from the weather which is so unpredictable.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“Monarchy is a violation of human rights, for it’s a mockery of equality, dignity and character.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“No government is civilized till it abolishes all allegiance to monarchy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Solo Standing on Guard: Life Before Law

“My fate is bound up with that of England, and whatever befalls the green isle, I shall not easily abandon it.”
― Leopold I

“Abuse is somewhat the staff of life in England everything, everybody is to be abused; it is a pity, as nothing more unproductive as this everlasting abuse can be imagined. As nothing ever gave the slightest opening to this abuse, it is hoped that it will be soon got over the meeting of Parliament will now do good in this respect. As far as your few continental relatives are concerned, I don’t think they will be able to fix anything upon your faithful servant. I have done in England at all times good services… Successes of vanity, I am never fishing for in England, nor anywhere else. The only influence I may exercise is to prevent mischief where I can, which occasionally succeeds: if war can be avoided, and the same ends obtained, it is natural that they should be tried first…”
― Leopold I

“Revere the kingdom, ruin the democracy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“You can either be a royal subject or a civilized human, not both.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mücadele Muhabbet: Gospel of An Unarmed Soldier

“Serve Britannia (The Sonnet)

Let us build a new Britain,
A Britain with actual heart's beauty,
Where we shall right our wrongs,
Instead of boasting our atrocities.
Let us build a new Britain,
Where commoners are king and queen,
Where unlike our tribal ancestors,
Our habit is not occupation but caring.
Let us herald a new Britain,
Where there is no exit only inclusion,
Where no one bows to no one for honor,
And each lives with self-determination.
Serve Britannia! Britannia, serve as aid.
Britain never again shall make others slave.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“It's a people's world, and people are to be the rulers, not some filthy, entitled, blue blooded nimrods.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“In my eyes the only rightful King or Queen is the one who dissolves their kingdom and establishes a democracy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“Turbocharged with inequalities, Britain went down the path of Brexit, to send a red signal to the world that it is no longer a cohesive society.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“The English are serial racists--one group gets accepted, another group becomes the scapegoat.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Frankissstein: A Love Story

“We have returned to Italy because we cannot live in England. Small-minded, smug, self-righteous, unjust, a country that hates the stranger, whether that stranger be a foreigner or an atheist, or a poet, or a thinker, or a radical, or a woman. For women are strange to men.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Frankissstein: A Love Story

“Barbarism, thy name is Britain.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None

“Pretend democracy is far worse than straightforward dictatorship.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None

“At a time when hopelessness and despair loom over the world, Queen Elizabeth torched a candle of hope, and acceptance, helping to show us what was possible.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“Faith communities will remember Queen Elizabeth, for their warm relationship with her, with a particular commitment to interfaith dialogue and harmony.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“I was connected to the Queen through my medical work.”
― Steven Magee

“London is often confused with England. The English also live in London but they are only one of the communities which inhabit a true world city.”
― M.J. Akbar, Have Pen, Will Travel: Observations of a Globetrotter

“The United Kingdom is like a schizophrenic patient with delusions of grandeur.”
― Ryan Gelpke, 2017: Our Summer of Reunions: Braai Seasons with Howl Gang