#britain

You know, sometimes I don't understand what's wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth—and yet sometimes we just don't seem to have the gumption to exploit our intellectual property. We split the atom, and now we have to get French or Korean scientists to help us build nuclear power stations. We perfected the finest cars on earth—and now Rolls-Royce is in the hands of the Germans. Whatever we invent, from the jet engine to the internet, we find that someone else carts it off and makes a killing from it elsewhere. ↗

— Boris Johnson

#cars #france #germany #intellectual-property #internet

(On Captain Britain) "Every British person thinks he's got the same accent as them. The air around him is warm like a summer meadow. He smells of honey. I've seen grown men weep at the sight of him. ↗

— Paul Cornell

#men

Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan—'a land without a people for a people without a land'—disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea? ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#britain #colonialism #europe #holy-land #irony

If you lay a finger on our pirates again, I'm going to kick your ass! ↗

— Hidekaz Himaruya

#arthur-kirkland #britain #england #hetalia #hidekaz-himaruya

However, because Britain is young and exciting, I did show my second line here once or twice. ↗

— Vivienne Westwood

#britain #did #exciting #here #however

A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses. ↗

— George Orwell

#england #nobility #orwell #royalty #uk

While there is a great value in things that are old, it seems that the overwhelming challenge in Britain in the late 20th century is to make every effort to see value in the contemporary and in the future. ↗

— Stephen Bayley

#britain #century #challenge #contemporary #effort

In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#because #britain #calling #competition #complete

It does not seem to me that the steps which would be needed to make Britain - and others - more comfortable in their relationship in the European Union are inherently so outlandish or unreasonable. ↗

— David Cameron

#comfortable #does #european #european union #inherently

When I came back to Britain, I realized that I was no longer a very young woman. I had to meet my new consciousness, my new age, with roles that reflected it somewhat. ↗

— Julie Christie

#back #britain #came #consciousness #had