Quotes About British

For him in India the British were ridiculous, stiff, unconfident, rule-bound. And he'd made me feel that we couldn't allow ourselves the shame of failure in front of these people. You couldn't let the ex-colonialists see you on your knees, for that was where they expected you to be. They were exhausted now; their Empire was gone; their day was done and it was our turn.

It has often been said that the British acquired their empire in a fit of absent-mindedness, as consequence of automatic trends, yielding to what seemed possible and what was tempting, rather than as a result of deliberate policy. If this is true, then the road to hell may just as well be paved with no intentions as with the proverbial good ones.

I've been proud to be national champion. I've really enjoyed it. I have very little opportunity to remind people that I'm British and it's a nice way of staying in touch. I'm going to defend it fiercely. I want to keep it.

Americans are a lot more open, of course. There's something more declamatory in the way you express emotions. It's a stereotype but it's true. British people can appear repressed in expressing emotions. Not very good at self-evaluating, or affirming situations, touching, anything like that.

We seem to have lost our British sense of humour. It's a great shame. We have to be so careful nowadays; we have lost a lot of humour because people are too frightened of getting too near touchy subjects.

Increased sympathy for an Islamist cause, lack of integration, and the absence of acceptance of Muslims into British society makes it harder for Muslims to challenge Islamism and tough for non-Muslims to understand it.

British audiences are toughest on British films. So often, a British film is the last thing they want to see. If you please them, you really know you've made an impact.

I was in the Rockin' Vicars, which was the first British band to tour behind the Iron Curtain. A lot of photos were taken of us next to milk churns.

I guess something that I've noticed from American acts who had success in touring is more of an explanation as to their music. Which is I think quite funny. I think British acts might like to leave more to the imagination - maybe a bit more obscure perhaps - a bit more shy.

There is a clear political desire to rebalance the British economy away from London towards the regions, and away from the services sector towards manufacturing.

'Fawlty Towers' was a huge influence on me. I mean, it was so slapstick, too. 'Are You Being Served?' was on 15 times a day, it seemed like, and I loved it.

Carla Lane's 'Butterflies' seemed to be on in our house at all times when I was a kid, as did 'The Good Life.' But it was 'Fawlty Towers that made me really sit up for the first time. Basil's incandescent rage made me howl.

When I was in my late teens, I discovered 'Fawlty Towers' and 'Monty Python,' and they still make me laugh.

There's a melancholy sense of things lost in the shabbier British seaside towns; of comfortable failure and better times long gone.

Even though I have lived in the States since I was 18, in my head I am still very British, and I do have this romance for towns in Middle America that nobody gets to see.

As a British rider, it's a privilege to be able to compete on home roads. The British public have really taken to cycling, and you can see that when the race goes through different towns: the community really gets behind it.

Were British protesters, armed with little more than a frisbee and a bag of plastic toy soldiers, really in danger of being shot by the US military in Gloucestershire?

The biggest difference between British TV and American TV is money. But what money doesn't do on American TV, which I thought it would, is buy you time. You don't get more time. You get more toys.

What brought the British to the Gambia in the first place - which was bigger than it is now - was trade in ivory because the Gambia had a lot of elephants. They wiped out all the elephants and ended up selling Africans.

This was the period when I used all the influence I had to get the British to abandon their export trade, and as much as possible convert all of their manufacturing facilities to the immediate needs of the war, including civilian, as well as military requirements.

The real problem at the moment is that the banks - because of their existing culture, which is frankly anti-business, obsession with short-term trading profits, not focusing on the long term - are throttling the recovery of British industry.

Freedom of movement in Europe has been all but abandoned as a cause in British politics. Brexit was far more about freedom of movement than our exact trading relationship with the EU, and the electorate rejected it.

In the weeks and months ahead, my task is to show I have the new ideas, the vision and the experience to earn the trust of the British people.

The truth is that neither British nor American imperialism was or is idealistic. It has always been driven by economic or strategic interests.