Little Britain Quotes & Sayings

It would actually be quite nice if the American ambassador in Britain could pay the [congestion] charge that everybody else is paying and not actually try and skive out of it like some chiselling little crook. — Ken Livingstone

The coffee served in the coffeehouses wasn't necessarily very good coffee. Because of the way coffee was taxed in Britain (by the gallon), the practice was to brew it in large batches, store it cold in barrels, and reheat it a little at a time for serving. So coffee's appeal in Britain had less to do with being a quality beverage than with being a social lubricant. People went to coffeehouses to meet people of shared interests, gossip, read the latest journals and newspapers - a brand-new word and concept in the 1660s - and exchange information of value to their lives and business. Some took to using coffeehouses as their offices - as, most famously, at Lloyd's Coffee House on Lombard Street, which gradually evolved into Lloyd's insurance market. — Bill Bryson

I know some of my parents' friends think 'Little Britain' is in incredibly poor taste. But swimming the Channel? You can't really say anything negative about that, can you? There's nothing better than making your parents happy. The glee on my father's face that day was amazing. — David Walliams

One person I do feel a little sorry for, though, is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important clergyman in Britain and he's only got two lousy palaces to live in. What sort of life is that for a man of God? I bet if Jesus came back, even he'd be embarrassed for him; I bet he wouldn't be able to look him in the eye. — Pat Condell

Kings" and "Kingdoms" were as thick in Britain as they had been in little Palestine in Joshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled up because they couldn't stretch out without a passport. — Mark Twain

My own view is that, since we have it and since it gives such pleasure to so many, especially around the world, it would be folly to get rid of it. The backside of whom are we going to lick when we send a letter in the Republic of Britain? William Hague? Harriet Harman? An elected British President will not glamourize the heads of state of other countries when they come on a state visit. Compared to carriages, crowns, orbs and ermine, an entry-level Jaguar and Marks & Spencer suit offer no edge over other nations when vying for trade advantages. By definition half the country will despise a Labour President or a Conservative one, and you can bet your bottom dollar that politicians will ensure that, if we do become a republic, there will be little other choice than the major parties. Which, at the time of writing, might include UKIP. Lovely. — Stephen Fry

I did a series in Britain years ago called 'Skins,' and I remember my little sister telling me that I had a Wikipedia page that was talking about me. But then it got deleted because on Wikipedia anyone can write stuff, right? So I think that it got sabotaged. But this is years ago, so it got taken down. I don't think it exists anymore. — Ben Lloyd-Hughes

Helen opened her eyes and gazed into the luminous blue of the sky. Was it crazy, she wondered, to be as grateful as she felt now, for moments like this, in a world that had atomic bombs in it - and concentration camps, and gas chambers? People were still tearing each other into pieces. There was still murder, starvation, unrest, in Poland, Palestine, India - God knew where else. Britain itself was sliding into bankruptcy and decay. Was it a kind of idiocy or selfishness, to want to be able to give yourself over to the trifles: to the parp of the Regent's Park Band; to the sun on your face, the prickle of grass beneath your heels, the movement of cloudy beer in your veins, the secret closeness of your lover? Or were those trifles all you had? Oughtn't you, precisely, to preserve them? To make little crystal drops of them, that you could keep, like charms on a bracelet, to tell against danger when next it came? — Sarah Waters

How could Britain operate in India for 300 years and take so little back from it in terms of understanding? — Jane Wilson-Howarth

Since the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland wants to remain a part of Great Britain, and since Ireland itself has shown little interest in reunification, the IRA's prospects for success through political channels have always been limited. — James Surowiecki

When I learnt, however, that in 1911 there had been twenty-one regular feminist periodicals in Britain, that there was a feminist book shop, a woman's press, and a woman's bank run by and for women, I could no longer accept that the reason I knew almost nothing about women of the past was because there were so few of them, and they had done so little. — Dale Spender

He had spent much of his childhood perched on the coast, with the taste of salt in the air: this was a place of woodland and river, mysterious and secretive in a different way from St. Mawes, the little town with its long smuggling history, where colorful houses tumbled down to the beach. — Robert Galbraith

In Britain, a 'block list' of harmful Web sites, used by all the major Internet Service Providers, is maintained by a private foundation with little transparency and no judicial or government oversight of the list. — Rebecca MacKinnon

And you threaten to abandon us to Voldemort if we do not comply with your wishes."
Harry's voice was razor-sharp. "I regret to inform you that you are not the center of the universe. I'm not threatening to walk out on magical Britain. I'm threatening to walk out on you. I am not a meek little Frodo. This is my quest and if you want in you will play by my rules."
Dumbledore's face was still cold. "I am beginning to doubt your suitability as the hero, Mr. Potter."
Harry's return gaze was equally icy. "I am beginning to doubt your suitability as my Gandalf, Mr. Dumbledore. Boromir was at least a plausible mistake. What is this Nazgul doing in my Fellowship? — Eliezer Yudkowsky

If a little less time was devoted to the translation of letters by Julius Caesar describing Britain 2000 years ago and a little more time was spent on teaching children how to describe (in simple modern English) the method whereby ethylene was converted into polythene in 1933 in the ICI laboratories at Northwich, and to discussing the enormous social changes which have resulted from this discovery, then I believe that we should be training future leaders in this country to face the world of tomorrow far more effectively than we are at the present time. — Ronald Sydney Nyholm

Great Britain, for instance, is too big and too diverse to be home to a small-island civilization, but in modern times the English - though not, I think, other peoples of the island - have cultivated what might be called a small-island mentality: all their most tiresome history books stress, sometimes in their opening words, that their history is a function of their insularity. They still write and read histories with such titles as Our Island Story and The Offshore Islanders.4The conviction that their island "arose from the azure main" and is like a gem "set in the silver sea" resounds in national songs and scraps of verse which they hear repeatedly. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the English invested heavily in naval security. They created the cult of the "English eccentric" - which is a way of idealizing the outcome of isolation. They have projected an image as "a singular race, one which prides itself on being a little mad. — Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

'Phantom of the Opera' started in my little 100-seater converted church in Britain with a stage where we did what we did. But it was the score itself was what made it. — Andrew Lloyd Webber

The haughty nephew ... and an even haughtier wife, both convinced that Germany was appointed by God to govern the world. Aunt July would come the next day, convinced that Great Britain had been appointed to the same post by the same authority.

Were both these loud-voiced parties right? On one occasion they had met, and Margaret ... had implored them to argue the subject out in her presence. Whereat they blushed and began to talk about the weather.

... Margaret then remarked: "To me one of two things is very clear; either God does not know his own mind about England and Germany, or else these do not know the mind of God."

A hateful little girl, but at thirteen she had grasped a dilemma that most people travel through life without perceiving. — E. M. Forster

[On George H.W. Bush:] By 1990 I had learned that I had to defer to him in conversation and not to stint the praise. If that was what was necessary to secure Britain's interests and influence, I had no hesitation in eating a little humble pie. — Margaret Thatcher

Politics of Friendship is, in other words, only a book between covers. For the real text, you must enter the classroom, put yourself to school, as a preview of the formation of collectivities. A single "teacher's" "students," flung out into the world and time, is, incidentally, a real-world example of the precarious continuity of a Marxism "to come," aligned with grassroots counterglobalizing activism in the global South today, with little resemblance to those varieties of "Little Britain" leftism that can take on board the binary opposition of identity politics and humanism, shifting gears as the occasion requires. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Little Britain ... ever since it first came on ... I come here a lot, we have a lot of friends here, my wife used to work with a lot of Brits, so we were always keyed into the hot shows when they first came out. So, I fell in love with Little Britain. — Paul Feig

I hate this argument that says little Britain or something outside, or Britain is part of a wider Europe. We can both be within our trading relationships within Europe but we can also be a fantastic global trader. — Iain Duncan Smith

The Welsh are not like any other people in Britain, and they know how separate they are. They are the Celts, the tough little wine-dark race who were the original possessors of the island, who never mixed with the invaders coming later from the east, but were slowly driven into the western mountains. — Laurie Lee

Communication between people of different nationalities enriches human society and makes it more colourful.. Imagine our Russian intellectuals, the kind, merry, perceptive old women in our villages, our elderly workers, our young lads, our little girls being free to enter the melting pot of ordinary human intercourse with the people of North and South America, of China, France, India, Britain and the Congo. What a rich variety of customs, fashion, cuisine and labour would then be revealed! what a wonderful human community would then come into being, emerging out of so many peculiarities of national characters and ways of life. And the beggarliness, blindness and inhumanity of narrow nationalism and hostility between states would be clearly demonstrated. — Vasily Grossman

Nice to see you, to see you nice — Bruce Forsyth

Britain has bred many great explorers, but they seem to get so little coverage compared to soccer and rugby players. — Lewis Gordon Pugh

I'm pretty rubbish, as we say in Britain, artwise, and I always envy people who can pick up something and even do just a little doodle of someone that looks vaguely like them. It's impressive. — Freddie Highmore

I was born in 1971, and Tom Baker was sort of my obsession as a kid and that's why we got him to do the voice over for 'Little Britain' because I was actually obsessed with Tom Baker. — David Walliams

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't. — Jonathan Coe

I only do children's films now! I think when you go to LA some people feel you've defected a little bit and that's not really the case. Ideally, I would love to work here and to work in America. That's in an ideal world. In fact, I came back to Britain recently to do an ITV1 drama that will be out in April for a couple of months! But I'm flying back to LA to do a pilot season. So, to work in both places is great. — Ashley Jensen

Little Britain may truly be called the heart's core of the city; the stronghold of true John Bullism. It is a fragment of London as it was in its better days, with its antiquated folks and fashions. Here flourish in great preservation many of the holiday games and customs of yore. The inhabitants most religiously eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, hot-cross-buns on Good Friday, and roast goose at Michaelmas; they send love-letters on Valentine's Day, burn the pope on the fifth of November, and kiss all the girls under the mistletoe at Christmas. Roast — Washington Irving

Do you love your country and your king?"
Karigan paused. What a curious question. King Zachary was relatively new to the throne
and she knew little of his policies or methods, but it wouldn't do to sound disloyal to a
dying servant of Sacoridia.
"Yes."
"I'm a messenger ... Green Rider." The young man's body spasmed with pain, and blood
dribbled over his lip and down his chin. "The satchel on the saddle ... important message
for ... king. Life or death. If you love Sacor ... Sacoridia and its king, take it. Take it to him. — Kristen Britain

People who believe in 'universal health care' show remarkably little interest - usually none - in finding out what that phrase turns out to mean in practice, in those countries where it already exists, such as Britain, Sweden or Canada. For one thing, 'universal health care' in these countries means months of waiting for surgery that Americans get in a matter of weeks or even days. — Thomas Sowell

I missed Britain. I'm from here and I never aspired to go to L.A. - it sort of happened by default. I loved being there. I found it a little bit difficult at first, but I found my way. — Ashley Jensen

It was such an idyllic time when I grew up in Hong Kong. It was a British colony and very much geared towards buying the best of Britain. My childhood does have a huge influence on how we design. There must be a little bit of that nostalgia - childhood is so special. — Marie-Chantal Claire

The early removal from school of future officers of Britain's seapower, leaving them unacquainted with the subject matter and ideas of the distant and recent past, may account for the incapacity of no military thinking in a world that devoted itself to military action. With little thought of strategy, no study of the theory of war or of planned objective, war's glorious art may have been glorious, but with individual exceptions, it was more or less mindless. — Barbara W. Tuchman

No." Laurence said, "I mean to retire when we have returned. I have enough money to keep Temeraire now, and enough of a countenance to ask my brother to put us up on one of the farms."

Or they might return to Australia, or to China. Temeraire has every right to ask that of him now that the war was won. Laurence did not mean to refuse him, he only hoped to go back to Wollaton Hall first and find a way to carry it with him somehow. He longed in a deep inward part for Britain, for home, and the house standing at twilight with all the windows lit. A child's memory of peace. He would even be grateful there for the counterfeit honors that had been heaped onto his head, if they gave his mother some peace, and his brother need not be ashamed to give him a field for Temeraire to sleep in, for a little while. — Naomi Novik

Destroy or take away the employment and wages of those artisans - which the corn laws in a great measure do - and you will, ere long, render the land in Great Britain of as little value as it is in other countries. — Joseph Hume

Honestly, I was just happy to get the work. I was chuffed to bits. I know David Furnish and Elton John a bit and I remember David talking very excitedly about it. This was going back four or five years even, when we were doing Little Britain at the Hammersmith Apollo. I'd lost my voice that night, but still did the show. I remember thinking: "God, they're going to think that's my voice and I'm not going to get in the film!" But it's just been a pleasure to be a part of. — Matt Lucas

I prefer the finesse of French humour. English humour is more scathing, more cruel, as illustrated by Monty Python and Little Britain. — Helen Mirren

It can be difficult to be subtle and not cartoony in prosthetics. But when you see characters like Bubbles and Desiree from 'Little Britain' on screen, it makes all the hard work worth it. It's such fun watching those transformations. — David Walliams