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

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

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

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

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
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

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

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

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


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

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

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

I have four children which is not bad considering I'm not a Catholic.
Peter Ustinov

I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.
Peter Ustinov

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.
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

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

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