Quotes from Peter Ustinov

People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.

It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon.

Sometimes I wish I could just fall in love. Then, at least you know who your opponent is.

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

The truth is an ambition which is beyond us.

By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.

Generals are fascinating cases of arrested development - after all, at five all of us wanted to be generals.

Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.

A diplomat these days is nothing but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally.

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.

The stupidity of a stupid man is mercifully intimate and reticient, while the stupidity of an intellectual is cried from the rooftops.

Men think about women. Women think about what men think about them

The stupidity of a stupid man is exercised in a restricted field; the stupidity of an intelligent man has a much wider diffusion, and a far greater effect, aided as it is by the element of surprise.

I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Love is an act of endless forgiveness. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.

And here is the lesson I learned in the army. If you want to do a thing badly, you have to work at it as though you want to do it well.

At my age, I'm often asked if I'm frightened of death and my reply is always, I can't remember being frightened of birth.

Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.

I am just a man, not fit to do the work of God... or the Devil.

In my day, there were things that were done, and things that were not done, and there was even a way of doing things that were not done.