Quotes & Sayings About British Culture

To me, British fashion has a story. It has history, and I feel it's very much about our culture. — Rita Ora

Many things have changed in our culture here in England as a direct result of the Pistols: the whole street-fashion thing in London, for example, or the coverage of popular culture in the national press, or the fact that the film industry is now about young people making films about young British issues. — Julien Temple

London is the financial capital of Europe, a great platform to America and Asia. I love the fact that in British culture you can be whoever you want, and people don't even look at you. I don't feel that in Paris or Milan. — Lapo Elkann

We are devastated to learn of the death of Alexander McQueen, one of the greatest talents of his generation. He brought a uniquely British sense of daring and aesthetic fearlessness to the global stage of fashion. In such a short career, Alexander McQueen's influence was astonishing - from street style, to music culture and the world's museums. His passing marks an insurmountable loss. — Anna Wintour

Although Wilson proclaimed neutrality, his sympathies, like those of many Americans, lay with Great Britain and France. Americans gratefully remembered crucial French assistance in the American Revolution and shared with the British a language, a culture, and a commitment to liberty. Germany, by contrast, was a monarchy with strong militaristic traditions. — Anonymous

It was tempting to take refuge in feelings of British superiority, although I disliked myself for it and hoped it didn't show. — John Mole

The English country house is certainly an icon of British culture. — Julian Fellowes

All the demons of Hell formerly reigned as gods in previous cultures. No it's not fair, but one man's god is another man's devil. As each subsequent civilization became a dominant power, among its first acts was to depose and demonize whoever the previous culture had worshipped. The Jews attacked Belial, the god of the Babylonians. The Christians banished Pan and Loki anda Mars, the respective deities of the ancient Greeks and Celts and Romans. The Anglican British banned belief in the Australian aboriginal spirits known as the Mimi. Satan is depicted with cloven hooves because Pan had them, and he carries a pitchfork based on the trident carried by Neptune. As each deity was deposed, it was relegated to Hell. For gods so long accustomed to receiving tribute and loving attention, of course this status shift put them into a foul mood. — Chuck Palahniuk

Many people worked with the inspiration to free the country by throwing the British out. After formal departure of the British this inspiration slackened. In fact there was no need to have this much inspiration. We should remember that in our pledge we have talked of the freedom of the country through defending religion and culture. There is no mention of departure of the British in that. — M. S. Golwalkar

One of the effects of indoctrination, of passing into the anglo-centrism of British West Indian culture, is that you believe absolutely in the hegemony of the King's English and in the proper forms of expression. Or else your writing is not literature; it is folklore, or worse. And folklore can never be art. Read some poetry by West Indian writers
some, not all
and you will see what I mean. The reader has to dissect anglican stanza after anglican stanza for Caribbean truth, and may never find it. The anglican ideal
Milton, Wordsworth, Keats
was held before us with an assurance that we were unable, and would never be able, to achieve such excellence. We crouched outside the cave. — Michelle Cliff

The emphasis and value on ideas and original thinking is an innate part of British culture, and in many ways, that describes the traditions of design. — Jonathan Ive

It's not simply that British films do well at the box office and generate revenue, it's that they provide a window to the world of what Britain and its culture is about. — Gurinder Chadha

I like reflecting the culture I understand best, spotting the idiosyncrasies of British people and revealing them to an audience in a way that amuses is what I find fun. — Jim Broadbent

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. — Gurinder Chadha

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. — Vince Cable

Look, I've always said from the word go many years ago that I felt the whole bonus culture, they need to think very carefully about being detached from the rest of the British public. — Iain Duncan Smith

Is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the second, by the Grace of God, still monarch of any African realm? No. this couldn't be a protest against Her Majesty to abdicate any African realm. No! Or is he or she avenging the substitution of African beliefs with Western culture by the British Missionaries who destroyed their culture and heritage? — S.A. David

Alan Moore is a peculiarly unsung triumph of British culture, and Northampton, where he was born in 1953, the son of brewery worker Ernest and printer Sylvia, is where you must go to find him. — Susanna Clarke

The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture. — Nelson Mandela

But in the years to come, as Muslim prestige and learning sank, and Hindu confidence, wealth, education and power increased, Hindus and Muslims would grow gradually apart, as British policies of divide and rule found willing collaborators among the chauvinists of both faiths. The rip in the closely woven fabric of Delhi's composite culture, opened in 1857, slowly widened into a great gash, and at Partition in 1947 finally broke in two. As the Indian Muslim elite emigrated en masse to Pakistan, the time would soon come when it would be almost impossible to imagine that Hindu sepoys could ever have rallied to the Red Fort and the standard of a Muslim emperor, joining with their Muslim brothers in an attempt to revive the Mughal Empire. — William Dalrymple

[For] decades, researchers have told us that the link between cataclysm and social disintegration is a myth perpetuated by movies, fiction, and misguided journalism. In fact, in case after case, the opposite occurs: In the earthquake and fire of 1906, Jack London observed: "never, in all San Francisco's history, were her people so kind and courteous as on this night of terror." "We did not panic. We coped," a British psychiatrist recalled after the July 7, 2005, London subway bombings. We often assume that such humanity among survivors, what author Rebecca Solnit has called "a paradise built in hell," is an exception after catastrophes, specific to a particular culture or place. In fact, it is the rule. — Jonathan M. Katz

Colonial American and Australian schoolchildren once memorized poems about British skylarks while the blue jays or cockatoos (according to continent) squawked outside, utterly ignored. The dominant culture has a way of becoming more real than the stuff at hand. — Barbara Kingsolver

hated the British business culture which I saw as slow, bureaucratic, cumbersome, lacking customer service, lacking initiatives. — Elisabeth Marx

This is a magazine-reading country. When one comes back from abroad, the two displays of American abundance that dazzle one are the supermarkets and the newsstands. There are no British equivalents of our Midcult magazines like The Atlantic and the Saturday Review, or of our mass magazines like Life and The Saturday Evening Post and Look, or of our betwixt-&-between magazines like Esquire and The New Yorker (which also encroach on the Little Magazine area). There are, however, several big-circulation women's magazines, I suppose because the women's magazine is such an ancient and essential form of journalism that even the English dig it. - 1960 — Dwight Macdonald

There's this British elegance that we, at times, have really missed in the States. We've always been more of a sportswear culture. — Paul Weller

At the beginning of my career, as a boy from Peru in London, suddenly discovering British culture and society, I looked so much at the work of the photographers Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson, which seemed to represent a wonderful vanished grandeur of my new country. — Mario Testino

My first book, 'Fast Forward', was about growing up in the shadow of Hollywood and how kids are affected by the culture of materialism and the cult of celebrity, and I've often felt the reason my work has an audience in the U.K. is because it's everything the British love to hate about the Americans. — Lauren Greenfield

For him (JFK) as he imagined of the British aristocracy, policies were less important than character traits such as dignity, courage, and honor. They did not pose as angry young men, but brought an almost lighthearted approach to politics. The very idea of politics invigorating society rather than dominating society very much appealed to Kennedy. — Scott Farris

In the UK cycling was very popular until the end of the 1950's but it really lost out to our love affair with the car. Regaining a culture where cycling is seen as an everyday part of life requires time and effort. Of course in some British towns it never really went away - just look at Oxford and Cambridge. In other places, where the car has been king for many decades, it takes more time. — Adrian Bell

It seems to us that one of the deepest divisions between the Russians and the Americans or British, is in their feeling toward their governments. The Russians are taught, and trained, and encouraged to believe that their government is good, that every part of it is good, and that their job is to carry it forward, to back it up in all ways. On the other hand, the deep emotional feeling among Americans and British is that all government is somehow dangerous, that there should be as little government as possible, that any increase in the power of government is bad, and that existing government must be watched constantly, watched and criticized to keep it sharp and on its toes. — John Steinbeck

I'm an Asian guy growing up in London so I see myself as British, but India is part of my culture. — Dev Patel

If pressed, I would say I feel British. It's where I grew up and where I choose to live, the culture that I love, but I feel perfectly at home in America, I don't feel like a tourist or anything. — Rebecca Hall

The Irish and British, they love satire, it's a large part of the culture. — Ben Nicholson

I respect the British a lot - their history, their past, their culture. I think it's beautiful, what they have with the monarchy. — Jean-Marc Vallee

Why is thinking about crime or imagining crime so goddamn central to pop culture? It doesn't matter whether it's American TV or British TV. And there's entire sections of bookstores devoted to crime. — Elliott Colla

The British cook, for her iniquities, is a foolish woman who should be turned into a pillar of salt which she never knows how to use. — Oscar Wilde

Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore rescinded the state's European Heritage Month proclamation for fear it would sound racist. It's too bad. Thus ends a month of celebrating the 400-year progression of our nation's British culture from wood to steel to graphite shafts. — Argus Hamilton

Everything I do is autobiographical in some way. 'Wayne's World' was me growing up in the suburbs of Toronto and listening to heavy metal, and 'Austin Powers' was every bit of British culture that my father, who passed away in 1991, had forced me to watch and taught me to love. — Mike Myers

In British culture, redheads get teased at school. But I've grown up enough to realize I love my hair. — Lily Cole

British officers arriving in India were supposed to spend up to three years in a Calcutta college, where they studied Hindu and Muslim law alongside English law; Sanskrit, Urdu and Persian alongside Greek and Latin; and Tamil, Bengali and Hindustani culture alongside mathematics, economics and geography. — Yuval Noah Harari

I'm a British intern going in. I'm hoping that John will just kind of tackle it from who this person is and what she's about rather than trying to go in on her culture. We need to move a step forward than that. — Parminder Nagra

Most British playwrights of my generation, as well as younger folks, apparently feel somewhat obliged to Russian literature - and not only those writing for theatres. Russian literature is part of the basic background knowledge for any writer. So there is nothing exceptional in the interest I had towards Russian literature and theatre. Frankly, I couldn't image what a culture would be like without sympathy towards Russian literature and Russia, whether we'd be talking about drama or Djagilev. — Tom Stoppard

Wanting to change only the British position at the top of the American social structure, John Adams feared that a "rage for innovation" would consume what was worthwhile about American culture. — John Ferling

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. — Tom Paulin

I've always felt, with 'The Iliad,' a real frustration that it's read wrong. That it's turned into this public school poem, which I don't think it is. That glamorising of war, and white-limbed, flowing-haired Greek heroes - it's become a cliched, British empire part of our culture. — Alice Oswald

The BBC's television, radio and online services remain an important part of British culture and the fact the BBC continues to thrive amongst audiences at home and abroad is testament to a professional and dedicated management team who are committed to providing a quality public service. — Pauline Neville-Jones

In order to confer their lost Nationality upon exiled Jews , the British with the help of the League of Nations began to rehabilitate the old Hebrew country, Palestine, with its long lost children. The Jews had maintained their race, religion, culture and language; and all they wanted was their natural territory to complete their Nationality. The reconstruction of the Hebrew Nation on Palestine is just an affirmation of the fact that Country, Race, Religion, Culture and Language must exist unequivocally together to form the Nation idea. — M. S. Golwalkar

My mother always tried to keep a little bit of British culture in our family. We'd drink tea all the time! — Kurt Cobain

Even though I spent the first five years of my life in Nagasaki, going to Japan can be really difficult. Even if they know I've been brought up in the West, they still expect me to understand all the subtleties of their culture, and if I get it wrong, it matters much more than if a British person gets it wrong. I find it intimidating. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I think British journalists do well in America because the newspaper culture there is so strong - telling stories and presenting them readably is in their DNA. British newspapers get a terrible rap, but they are brilliant in their presentation, most of them, so full of vitality and literary wit. — Tina Brown

I'm so excited to be working on 'Doctor Who,' as it's such a big and important part of British culture. — Maisie Williams

The Irish have played a part in every military conflict on American soil since the founding of the republic. Donegal-born Richard Montgomery was the first American general to lose his life in the Revolutionary War. In fact, one British major general at the time told the House of Commons that "half the rebel Continental Army was from Ireland. — Rashers Tierney

They [some countries] borrowed money to go acquire things, Indian power plants and Danish newspapers and British soccer teams. And they did it willy-nilly, and they themselves a story, that Icelandic history and culture and DNA leaves us very well-suited to being investment bankers. — Michael Lewis

The British accomplished much with little; at the height of empire, an insignificant number of Anglo-Celts controlled the entire Indian subcontinent. A confident culture can dominate far larger numbers of people, as England did for much of modern history. By contrast, in an era of Massively Applied Desultoriness, we spend a fortune going to war with one hand tied behind our back ... So on we stagger, with Cold War institutions, transnational sensibilities, politically correct solicitousness, fraudulent preening pseudo-nation building, expensive gizmos, little will, and no war aims ... but real American lives. — Mark Steyn

The Beatles' story is all of our stories. It is about how the youth culture emerged, the drug culture emerged, how politics rose to the fore as a universal debate. It's about rebellion, it's about the growth of the British entertainment system, the growth of the rock n' roll entertainment system. — Bob Spitz

In some respects Abbott proved to be the id of Australia's modern conservative movement: hyper-adversarial, willing to occupy itself in opposition to whatever social issues were preoccupying the left. Owing more to American political culture than the British inheritance Abbott claimed to value, contemporary Australian conservatism makes the grave error of believing in things other than power and stability. — Peter Van Onselen

Under orders from Kitchener himself, an attempt was to be made to bribe the Turkish commander of the Kut siege into letting Townshend's army go in return for one million English pounds' worth of gold. If Lawrence resented being the bearer of this shameful instruction, almost without precedent in British military history, he never let on. Then again, he'd very recently been given two reminders of the puffery and hypocrisy of military culture. — Scott Anderson

You know the only rule you need to know to get on in this country? 'Never complain, never explain. — Amanda Craig

Asked what would be his idea of Heaven, one statesman in 1897 said it would be to receive a flow of telegrams alternating news of a British victory by sea and a British victory by land. — Barbara W. Tuchman

I've even come to a conclusion that would get me blackballed from ever setting foot in liberal education circles again. That is this: colonialism wasn't 100 percent evil. More like 96 percent evil. Sometimes the colonizing culture actually made moral improvements in the native culture. I came to this conclusion while reading about the abolition of the Indian custom of widow burning. In pre-British India, a man's widow was burned alongside his corpse. The British colonialists put a stop to that. So yes, they criminally oppressed an entire people. But like a robber who fills up the ice trays while he steals the TV, they did a smidgeon of good. — A. J. Jacobs

I swear, I didn't really go in thinking, 'I'll be the Simon Cowell' of 'Top Chef.' I was just used to being a judge on British food shows where people are much more outspoken and rather rude. That's the culture over here. — Toby Young

The British are civilized. People still read and some conversations can be interesting. By contrast American are fat and stupid and so thoroughly brain-blurred and over-sold by our culture that there's a numbing, unapologetic, arrogance and desperation about us. In fact, I've just defined the perfect consumer. — Dan Fante

It's celebrated in British culture to be eccentric. — Paloma Faith

I've just finished a series of Olivia Manning novels. She's best known for two trilogies: Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy. The six novels are continuous and contain the same set of characters. They are based on Manning's experiences in Eastern Europe and Egypt during the Second World War. Each novel is a wonderful picture of the peculiar British expatriate culture and what was happening during the war. She's one of those brilliant women who write very well about domestic relationships. All the books are slim, and it's easy to gallop through them. — Sarah Waters