Quotes from Peter Ustinov

The French and the British are such good enemies that they can't resist being friends.

Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.

The great thing about history is that it is adaptable.

I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.

The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.

I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.

British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive it. If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.

This is a free country, madam. We have a right to share your privacy in a public place.

I'm Rally of Unionist Separist Extremes, sometimes known as the R.U.S.E. … It's the party at present in power.

What is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn?

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.

Life is unfair but remember sometimes it is unfair in your favour.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Life was cheap in the Middle Ages. It has become cheaper since. It is only in specific battles for specific lives that our culture is put to the test, and with it our humanity.

That weakness in human nature which goes by the name of strength.

Please keep off the grass.

Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.

At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.

If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.

Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.

The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.