I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.
Clement Attlee

I've always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden's animations.
Stephen Fry

However British you may be, I am more British still.
Henry James

There is no cannibalism in the British navy, absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount.
Graham Chapman

In dealing with the China problem, the British and American side, which had particularly strong interests in China, should have based its judgments about the origins of the problem on direct observation of the actual circumstances at the time.
Hideki Tojo

A British pressing with a compilation of the best stuff really, I mean actually not only that but, these were all kind of semi hits for the people on it in America.
Eric Clapton

In the last 15 or 20 years, I've watched the British press simply go to hell. There seems to be no limit, no depths to which the tabloids won't sink. I don't know who these people are but they're little pigs.
John Le Carre

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense... I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.
Anthony Hopkins

I think it has something to do with being British. We don't take ourselves as seriously as some other countries do. I think a lot of people take themselves far too seriously; I find that a very tedious attitude.
Joan Collins

I received an OBE from the Queen, which probably doesn't mean anything in America but is quite nice in England - the Order of the British Empire for services to drama.
Joan Collins

I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, 'cause I've got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one... now a British one. I think it'd be pretty good to have an American phrase book.
Joe Strummer

If the British Fleet were lost or captured, the Atlantic might be dominated by Germany, a power hostile to our way of life, controlling in that event most of the ships and shipbuilding facilities of Europe.
Wendell Willkie

We cannot, with good conscience, expect the British to set up an orderly schedule for the liberation of India before we have decided for ourselves to make all who live in America free.
Wendell Willkie

My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.
Sidney Poitier

The best research for playing a drunk is being a British actor for 20 years.
Michael Caine

Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.
Wallace Stevens

Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.
Pete Townshend

Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.
Pete Townshend

What we learned quite early on is what was really important to early British pop that we produced-and this is where we were distinct from almost everybody else in this respect-is that it had to reflect exactly what the audience wanted us to say.
Pete Townshend

The British Constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.
Queen Elizabeth II