Ustinov Quotes & Sayings

I can never forgive God for having invented the French — Peter Ustinov

American democracy is the inalienable right to sit on your front porch, in your pyjamas, drinking a can of beer and shouting out 'Where else is this possible?' Which doesn't seem to me to be freedom, really. — Peter Ustinov

We used to have lots of questions to which there were no answers. Now, with the computer, there are lots of answers to which we haven't thought up questions. — Peter Ustinov

Life was cheap in the Middle Ages. It has become cheaper since. It is only in specific battles for specific lives that our culture is put to the test, and with it our humanity. — Peter Ustinov

Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship. — Peter Ustinov

By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door. — Peter Ustinov

The stupidity of a stupid man is exercised in a restricted field; the stupidity of an intelligent man has a much wider diffusion, and a far greater effect, aided as it is by the element of surprise. — Peter Ustinov

Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them. — Peter Ustinov

I believe that the Jews have made a contribution to the human condition out of all proportion to their numbers: I believe them to be an immense people. Not only have they supplied the world with two leaders of the stature of Jesus Christ and Karl Marx, but they have even indulged in the luxury of following neither one nor the other. — Peter Ustinov

To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness. — Peter Ustinov

And here is the lesson I learned in the army. If you want to do a thing badly, you have to work at it as though you want to do it well. — Peter Ustinov

Toronto is a kind of New York operated by the Swiss. — Peter Ustinov

People are annoyed with the Chinese for not respecting more human rights. But with a population that size it's very difficult to have the same attitude to human rights. — Peter Ustinov

Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique. — Peter Ustinov

There are experts in little things but there are no experts in big things. There are experts in this fact and that fact but there are no moral experts. — Peter Ustinov

Generals are fascinating cases of arrested development - after all, at five all of us wanted to be generals. — Peter Ustinov

The first proper mystery novel that I read was 'Murder On the Orient Express' with a gaunt David Niven and a cherubic Peter Ustinov on the cover. 'Orient Express,' you'll recall, is the one where everyone did it, which delighted me no end, and I was immediately hooked. — Adrian McKinty

The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation. — Peter Ustinov

Robert Vavra is one of these artists, part magician, part alchemist, who is able to create a series of photographs in unforgettable compositions. Only visible are the dunes, the blinding fields of flowers and the vast sky, the epic intimacy of Robert Vavra's vision. — Peter Ustinov

All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses - fix your bayonets boys - gentlemen, synchronize your watches - in ten seconds time the barrage starts, ... a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years. — Peter Ustinov

A diplomat these days in nothing, but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally. — Peter Ustinov

The truth is an ambition which is beyond us. — Peter Ustinov

Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first. — Peter Ustinov

When I was small, I would refuse to drink when I ate fish because I thought the fish would reconstitute itself in my stomach — Peter Ustinov

Acting on television is like being asked by the captain to entertain the passengers while the ship goes down. — Peter Ustinov

Irrespective of nationality, soldiers are always open to the same discomfort and to the same comradeship the world over. I'll make things easy for you if you make things easy for me. That is, after all the unwritten law of the barracks. — Peter Ustinov

Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much.
— Peter Ustinov

Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures. — Peter Ustinov

Basically I'm a very serious person, but I think the form it takes with me is comedy. I see the amusing side of all potentially pompous situations. — Peter Ustinov

Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth. — Peter Ustinov

The stupidity of a stupid man is mercifully intimate and reticient, while the stupidity of an intellectual is cried from the rooftops. — Peter Ustinov

To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal. — Peter Ustinov

Two members of my profession who are not urgently needed by my profession, Mr. Ronald Reagan and Mr. George Murphy, entered politics, and they've done extremely well. Since there has been no reciprocal tendency in the other direction, it suggests to me that our job is still more difficult than their new one. — Peter Ustinov

I've always been a secret locked-room fanatic. I read my first one when I was about ten or 11, Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express,' with David Niven and Peter Ustinov on the cover. — Adrian McKinty

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them. — Peter Ustinov

The great thing about history is that it is adaptable. — Peter Ustinov

The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill. — Peter Ustinov

Life is unfair but remember sometimes it is unfair in your favour. — Peter Ustinov

The French and the British are such good enemies that they can't resist being friends. — Peter Ustinov

This is a free country, madam. We have a right to share your privacy in a public place. — Peter Ustinov

At my age, I'm often asked if I'm frightened of death and my reply is always, I can't remember being frightened of birth. — Peter Ustinov

Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved. — Peter Ustinov

I don't know why I have these dreams. I've never wanted to be Pope. In fact, I have a greater affinity to Martin Luther. — Peter Ustinov

Monica Seles: I'd hate to be next door to her on her wedding night. — Peter Ustinov

Love is an act of endless forgiveness; a tender look which becomes a habit. — Peter Ustinov

It is our responsibilities not ourselves that we should take seriously. — Peter Ustinov

Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them. — Peter Ustinov

In my day, there were things that were done, and things that were not done, and there was even a way of doing things that were not done. — Peter Ustinov

People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom. — Peter Ustinov

Flogging. The only solution to every problem. I warrant even the culprit himself doesn't know! It was just - his turn! — Peter Ustinov

World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable; and when it comes, it will appeal to patriotism in its truest sense,in its only sense, the patriotism of humans who love their national heritages so deeply that they wish to preserve them in safety for the common good. — Peter Ustinov

I am an international citizen conceived in Russia, born in England, working in Hollywood, living in Switzerland, and touring the World. — Peter Ustinov

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died. — Peter Ustinov

I hate being moved. I hate that man who came in. So self-righteous, so cruel. He made fun of me, that's why I cried. You never did that. You led me into temptation by your - politeness. — Peter Ustinov

Please keep off the grass. — Peter Ustinov

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from. — Peter Ustinov

Better we see them seeing us, because then we can all see together, but when not seeing them seeing us we might not see them seeing us doing what we are doing. MI5 agent Iona von Ustinov (father of actor Peter Ustinov) to MI6 agent Desmond Bristow about the PDVE (Portuguese Secret Police) in 1944. — Desmond Bristow

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious — Peter Ustinov

Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus. — Peter Ustinov

If the present White House leadership runs the gauntlet of common sense and the people's will for peace and challenges us by starting MX missile deployment, then the Soviet Union will respond by deploying a new intercontinental ballistic missile of the same class, with its characteristics in no way inferior to those of the MX. — Dmitriy Ustinov

The young need old men. They need men who are not ashamed of age, not pathetic imitations of themselves ... Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth. — Peter Ustinov

If history teaches us one thing, than that history teaches us nothing. — Peter Ustinov

If you're going to be a prisoner of your own mind, the least you can do is make sure it's well furnished. — Peter Ustinov

I'm Rally of Unionist Separist Extremes, sometimes known as the R.U.S.E. ... It's the party at present in power. — Peter Ustinov

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilized music in the world. — Peter Ustinov

Unfortunately, a superabundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares — Peter Ustinov

I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer. — Peter Ustinov

Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy. — Peter Ustinov

I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know what a sad place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day. — Peter Ustinov

Did you know that the worldwide food shortage that threatens up to five hundred million children could be alleviated at the cost of only one day, only one day, of modern warfare. — Peter Ustinov

Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information. — Peter Ustinov

It was the sort of situation that would be ever so charming and warmly human in a film with Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith but that sort of film is only charming because they leave out so many details, and real life is all the details they leave out. — Russell Hoban

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich. — Peter Ustinov

The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought. — Peter Ustinov

What is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn? — Peter Ustinov

Artificial glamor-false eyelashes, that sort of thing-usually is put on to hide a vacuum. The most beautiful face can only look vacuous if it masks an empty head. — Peter Ustinov

Did you know that every two hours the nations of this world spend as much on armaments as they spend on the children of this world every year? — Peter Ustinov

A twinge of conscience is a glimpse of God. — Peter Ustinov

The aggressor too should know that the preemptive use of nuclear weapons would not insure victory. With modern detection systems and the combat readiness of the Soviet Union's strategic nuclear forces, the United States would not be able to deal a crippling blow to the socialist countries. The aggressor will not be able to evade an all-crushing retaliatory strike. — Dmitriy Ustinov

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us — Peter Ustinov

unfortuneately a super abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential of nightmares — Peter Ustinov

British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive it. If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps. — Peter Ustinov

Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, it is our duty to furnish it well. — Peter Ustinov

Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find. — Peter Ustinov

The older I get, the more people listen to me - even though I say the same as always ... — Peter Ustinov

If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue. — Peter Ustinov

I had started by imitating a parrot, which is unusual, in that a parrot is supposed to imitate you. By taking the initiative you allow the parrot no alternative but to be itself, which proves again that attack is often the best defence. — Peter Ustinov

To live like a poor man is only fun when you are rich. — Peter Ustinov

I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins. — Peter Ustinov

Sometimes I wish I could just fall in love. Then, at least you know who your opponent is. — Peter Ustinov

That weakness in human nature which goes by the name of strength. — Peter Ustinov

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of. — Peter Ustinov

At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it. — Peter Ustinov

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done. — Peter Ustinov

As I grow older I find that though I think I'm saying the same things as I always did, people listen to me more. — Peter Ustinov

It's wrong to flog a man. It's against his being a man. — Peter Ustinov

I think that first nights should come near the end of a play's run-as indeed, they often do. — Peter Ustinov

The point of living and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come — Peter Ustinov

It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon. — Peter Ustinov

Peter Ustinov was the first really positive influence in my career. He was real and he bore witness to it. The things he said to you, he lived them. — Terence Stamp