Quotes on Britain

We are descended from a people whose government was founded on liberty; our glorious forefathers of Great Britain made liberty the foundation of everything. That country is become a great, mighty, and splendid nation; not because their government is strong and energetic, but, sir, because liberty is its direct end and foundation.

That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.

One of the brilliant things about Britain is the way you've managed to save old things but to keep using them - that they've not just become museums the way they do in the United States.

Although I was always very happy in Britain, I never stopped thinking of America as home, in the fundamental sense of the term. It was where I came from, what I really understood, the base against which all else was measured.

We do not always appreciate the role the Queen has played in one of the most significant changes in the past 60 years: the transformation of Britain into a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society. No one does interfaith better than the Royal family, and it starts with the Queen herself.

People looked at my early pictures and called them the most disgusting things ever, and now 'Hairspray' is being done at every school in Britain and America.

We believe no more in Bonaparte's fighting merely for the liberties of the seas than in Great Britain's fighting for the liberties of mankind. The object is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other nations.

But I am an optimist about Britain; and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is not that the optimist believes the world is wonderful and the pessimist believes it's beset by challenges; the difference is the pessimist believes we will be defeated by them; the optimist thinks the challenges can be overcome.

Britain is A world by itself, and we will nothing pay For wearing our own noses.

The USA is a threat to world peace. Who are they to pretend that they are the policemen of the world, the ones that should decide for the people of Iraq what should be done with their government and their leadership. All that [the USA] wants is Iraqi oil. [Blair is] simply the foreign minister of the United States. He is no longer prime minister of Britain.

I must be absolutely clear about this. Britain cannot accept the present situation on the Budget. It is demonstrably unjust. It is politically indefensible: I cannot play Sister Bountiful to the Community while my own electorate are being asked to forego improvements in the fields of health, education, welfare and the rest.

We weren't getting a fair deal on the budget and I wasn't going to have it. There's a great strand of equity and fairness in the British people - this is our characteristic. There's not a strand of equity and fairness in Europe - they're out to get as much as they can. That's one of those enormous differences. So I tackled it on that basis.

One of the most heartening phenomena in today's Britain is the great diversity of the modern nerd - the nerd is out and proud, and while she may love 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' merchandise more than is strictly warranted, she is in every way to be cherished as an exemplar of cosmopolitanism and tolerance.

William Wilberforce...w as a great man who impacted the Western world as few others have done. Blessed with brains, charm, influence and initiative, much wealth ... he put evangelism on Britain's map as a power for social change, first by overthrowing the slave trade almost single-handed and then by generating a stream of societies for doing good and reducing evil in public life... To forget such men is foolish.

I'll wear no convicts uniform nor meekly serve my time that Britain might brand Irelands fight 800 years of crime.

My job is to stop Britain from going red.

What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars Englandhe should have said Britain, of coursealways wins one battlethe last.

If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers.