A Quote by Paul Theroux

The larger an English industry was, the more likely it was to go bankrupt, because the English were not naturally corporate people; they disliked working for others and they seemed to resent taking orders. On the whole, directors were treated absurdly well, and workers badly, and most industries were weakened by class suspicion and false economies and cynicism. But the same qualities that made English people seem stubborn and secretive made them, face to face, reliable and true to their word. I thought: The English do small things well and big things badly.

Paul Theroux

Quote Topics

All Things Badly Bankrupt Because Big Big Thing Big Things Class Corporate Cynicism Directors Disliked Economies English English People Face Face To Face False Go Industries Industry Larger Likely Made More Most Naturally Orders Others People Qualities Reliable Resent Same Secretive Seem Seemed Small Small Things Stubborn Suspicion Taking Them Things Thought Treated True Weakened Well Were Whole Word Workers Working

Quote Author

Paul Theroux
American - Novelist
Born: April 10, 1941

Most English speakers do not have the writer's short fuse about seeing or hearing their language brutalized. This is the main reason, I suspect, that English is becoming the world's universal tongue: English-speaking natives don't care how badly others speak English as long as they speak it. French, once considered likely to become the world's lingua franca, has lost popularity because those who are born speaking it reject this liberal attitude and become depressed, insulted or insufferable when their language is ill used.

Russell Baker

The argument that there was a social pathology of the English Reformation, that there were fundamental changes in English society and the English church which made the Reformation inevitable, is academically stone dead.

David Starkey

Well, English is no problem for me because I am actually English. My whole family are English; I was brought up listening to various forms of the English accent. Obviously there are more specific ones that get a little bit tricky. Same with American stuff. But because in Australia we're so inundated with American culture, television, this that and the other, everyone in Australia can do an American accent. It's just second nature.

Guy Pearce

James Joyce's English was based on the rhythm of the Irish language. He wrote things that shocked English language speakers but he was thinking in Gaelic. I've sung songs that if they were in English, would have been banned too. The psyche of the Irish language is completely different to the English-speaking world.

Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh

English is no problem for me because I am actually English. My whole family are English; I was brought up listening to various forms of the English accent.

Guy Pearce

I saw Chekhov a number of times in English, and I thought that it translates very well in English, for some reason, from the Russian to the English.

Isabelle Huppert

Through my youth, there was imposed on us a culture relentlessly English. English books were all you could buy; English television filled our screens, and in consequence, England seemed to matter in a way that our world didn't.

Richard Flanagan

My children were educated in what were then Chinese schools, and they learned English as a subject. But they made up when they went to English-language universities. So they didn't lose out. They had a basic set of traditional Confucian values. Not my grandchildren.

Lee Kuan Yew

There was never a choice to sing in English or French, that's the thing. We started a band and sang right away in English. You reproduce the thing you like, and most of the bands we liked were coming from England or the U.S. We also came to cherish the fact that there was no one in France singing in English -we were so happy Phoenix to be the first. Even if we are traitors to France, our country, which I'll never understand, because we talk about things that are very French.

Thomas Mars

My English is closer to the literary English, and I'm not very familiar with jokes in English or with, you know, with small talk in English.

J. M. G. Le Clezio

Most of intellectuals are false prophets, flatterers of the court. The real prophets are the exception and treated badly. How badly they're treated depends on the society. Like in Eastern Europe, they were treated very badly. In Latin America, they were slaughtered.

Noam Chomsky

My fitness trainer's English, my physio's English, some of my friends are English. I don't have a problem with English people at all.

Andy Murray

In the 19th century, the English were loathed. Every memoir that you read of that period, indicates the loathing that everybody felt for the English, the only difference between the English and Americans, in this respect, is the English rather liked being loathed and the Americans apparently dislike it intensely.

Malcolm Muggeridge

Growing up was very interesting for me. If you were Haitian, people just automatically assumed that English was a second language. So they had a special class for my brother and I, but we spoke proper English.

Karen Civil

A lot of the demos I write are all in English, so releasing music in English isn't translating to English, it's just keeping them in English.

Henry Lau

When I was living in China, I learned to make things hyper-explicit because often they were being read by people whose command of English kept them from picking up what I thought were obvious signals.

James Fallows

A Quote by Paul Theroux

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors