Top 1200 British Museum Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

No British Government ever will and ever can risk the bones of a British grenadier.

Children of Men' reinforces what few would doubt, but which British cinema would seldom lead you to suspect: the British landscape bristles with cinematic potential.

My folks were English. They were too poor to be British. I still have a bit of British in me. In fact, my blood type is solid marmalade.

There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose.

Non-conformity has always been one of the great British virtues, and that includes non-conformity to things British.

It wasn't just British gangster films that really did for me as a kid, personally, it was British films in general.

[Congress] is not the British Parliament, and I hope it never will become the British Parliament... Are we going to bring the president in here and have a question period like the prime minister has in Great Britain?

I venture to claim two qualifications for the great office which I hold, which to my mind, without making invidious distinctions, is one of the most important that can be held by any Englishman; and those qualifications are that in the first place I believe in the British Empire, and in the second place I believe in the British race. I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen.

It seems appropriate that the author of '1984' was a British citizen. George Orwell must have seen how easily the great British public's lamb-like disposition toward its leaders could be exploited to create a police state.

I am not in favour of the takeover of excellent and strategically important British companies by struggling foreign firms whose actions are fuelled by tax avoidance, and who want to asset-strip the intellectual property of the British company and then dismember it.

I know too much about British politics to comment on British politics.

When I became director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was stodgy, gray, run by elitists. I said, 'Hey, let's kick the thing around.' I wanted to attract young people to the museum. I said, 'Make it hospitable. I want them to come. I want them to make dates, pick up girls, pick up boys - either way; I don't care.'

About California... "I thought it was an appalling place. Then I went through a period of being amused by it. Now it's sort of both. Californians don't have that marvelous British cynicism, but then the British can be so patronizing at times.

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.

Israel was born under the British mandate. We learned from the British what democracy means, and how it behaves in a time of danger, war and terror. We thank Britain for introducing freedom and respect of human rights both in normal and demanding circumstances.

The tried and tested becomes very boring. There's no way that the British equivalent of a Bryan Cranston would get the lead in a British equivalent of 'Breaking Bad.'

When I was younger, I was in love with everything about the British Isles, from British folklore to Celtic music. That was always where my passions were as a young girl, and so I studied folklore as a college student in England and Ireland.

It is not for us to give an assessment to what happened, but in our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government, and the reputation of the title 'Sir' has sustained heavy damage.

There is an insuperable problem about introducing immigrants to British values. There are no British values. Nor are there any Serbian or Peruvian values. No nation has a monopoly on fairness and decency, justice and humanity.

I am attached to a strict approach to Brexit: I respect the British vote, but the worst thing would be a sort of weak E.U. vis-a-vis the British.

For British cinema to survive, you really need a British film culture, and it's got to start down there, with young kids watching films in the cinema - so they can be transported to a different world.

No medieval monarch in the whole of British history ever had such power as every modern British Prime Minister has in his or her hands. Nor does any American President have power approaching this

British people are surprised that I'm British!

If the deaf are to hear, the sound has to be very loud. When we dropped the bomb, it was not our intention to kill anybody. We have bombed the British Government. The British must quit India and make her free.

In British music, you have indie, rock... Grime is now one of those pillars. It's a foundation of British music.

The use of water cannon could have changed the face of British policing; it would have made a huge difference to British policing.

I lost a lot of friends at the hands of the British Army. The person who actually introduced me to my wife, Colm Keenan, was murdered by the British Army. He was a member of the IRA, but he was unarmed.

British fashion is a serious business. The British fashion industry is worth £21bn to the U.K. economy and employs 819,000 people across the country.

I feel the Conservatives are doing really well both in attracting votes from British Indians and also having successful British Indians in the party.

The museum is full of interesting things. All kinds of paintings are there. And then paintings too thick to put in a frame, that they call sculpture. And then there are spectators. with their scorecards, rooting for culture. And spectators of the spectators, looking for love's introduction. And art students taking notes. And old women trying to remember the past. And old men with too much to forget. And tourists, thinking that a museum represents a city. And loafers so poor, they study their soberness here.

The British seizure of Hongkong was an aspect of one of the most ugly crimes of the British Empire: the takeover and destruction of India, and the use of India to flood China with opium.

It does seem to me that the British in particular, British horticultural literature and television programmes, focus a huge amount on how we garden and hardly at all on why we garden.

The problem with being British... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic, but you never really enjoy success.

Science fiction has always been a means for political comment. H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds' wasn't about a Martian invasion - it was a critique of British colonialism, and... 'The Time Machine' is really an indictment of the British class system.

They're very harsh people, the British: hard to impress, very tough on each other, but I rather like that. It's not that the British are more honest - you're just under no illusion with them.

There's a beauty shop companion called School of Beauty, School of Culture at the Birmingham Museum of Art. I got an email that said a couple had a guerrilla wedding in front of that picture. They slipped into the museum with a preacher and had their wedding ceremony in front of it. It turns out that the woman is a beautician and the man is a barber, they had seen that picture, and they said it was the perfect place to get married.

I work for the British people. I do not gather intelligence so the government can lie to the British people.

I’m curious about things that people aren’t supposed to see—so, for example, I liked going to the British Museum, but I would like it better if I could go into all the offices and storage rooms, I want to look in all the drawers and—discover stuff. And I want to know about people. I mean, I know it’s probably kind of rude but I want to know why you have all these boxes and what’s in them and why all your windows are papered over and how long it’s been that way and how do you feel when you wash things and why don’t you do something about it?

I feel so much more connected with my Asian side than I do with my British side - of course, I'm proud of my British side.

Even in terms of the technical stuff there's a very traditional British flavor that comes out. Our characters are influenced by our culture so there's definitely something unique about British wrestlers in the U.S.

My entire act is through and through British. I reference everything British.

The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomyand freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity byallegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.

I know they call it the British Invasion, but musically, I call it the British Infusion.

The last person to get across that town in under three hours was yelling "The British are coming! The British are coming!"

No man can honestly sit there and say he doesn't care about what people think, doesn't care if he's got the support of the British public or British fans.

In my view the European culture carries a very heavy responsibility for the creation of Israel... it is a product of both British and Stalin's anti- Semitism, but the British never faced their own complicity in its construction.

All the best British groups were inspired by black American music. With The Beatles, it was Motown and the blues. With me, it was a mixture of British styles and the more sophisticated Seventies soul of Barry White and Marvin Gaye.

No, I'm very patriotic. I'm very British and I'm very pro-British, but that in no way means you therefore exterminate anybody else you meet who doesn't come from Britain!

'A great British icon' is not the phrase I'd use about anybody, but there are people you admire that happen to be British. I think it's a phrase that gets attached to anyone who's been around long enough to become overfamiliar.

I have always thought we should think less about the British film industry as an entity, and more about getting British talent working.

I got a chance to work with so many stalwarts from British cinema. Judi Dench, of course, who is a legend. Then there was my director Stephen Frears. He is the man who made some of British cinema's salient trendsetters.

I watch a lot of British television so people like Olivia Coleman, Sheridan Smith and Jodie Comer continue to inspire me with their versatility and story telling in British television.

There are 3 basic differences between we British and you Americans. One, we speak English, and you don't. Two, when we have a "World Championship", we invite teams from other nations. Three, when you meet the British head of State, you only have to get down on one knee.

Great works of art can be produced in barbarous societies - in fact the very narrowness of primitive society gives their ornamental art a peculiar concentration and vitality. At some time in the ninth century one could have looked down the Seine and seen the prow of a Viking ship coming up the river. Looked at today in the British Museum, it is a powerful work of art; but to the mother of a family trying to settle down in her little hut, it would have seemed less agreeable - as menacing to her civilisation as the periscope of a nuclear submarine.

Ending the slave trade was contrary to British economic interests. For all its limitations and hypocrisies - British slavery itself, of course, still continued to exist - I still think it was a great moment in human history.

We've never adopted Americanisms. We are a very British band from a very British cultural scene. We fly that flag and that is something I enjoy.

If I'm in a gathering of filmmakers, I'm first and foremost a British Indian; if I'm in a gathering of British Indians, I'm a woman director. There are so many sides to who I am that I change all the time.

I've heard Jerry do mini concerts while driving, especially when the music of The Beatles or a handful of other 'British Invasion' bands aired. Hearing Jerry Lawler sing with a British accent is quite an experience.

I love the British public and the British fans; they are true boxing fans. If you get them on your side, you can go right to the end and achieve anything in life.

One of the best things about the award season is that when a British film succeeds at the Oscars and BAFTAs, such as 'Slumdog Millionaire' in 2009 and 'The King's Speech' this year, the British public get right behind it with an immense sense of national pride.