I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“In England if something goes wrong--say, if one finds a skunk in the garden--he writes to the family solicitor, who proceeds to take the proper measures; whereas in America, you telephone the fire department. Each satisfies a characteristic need; in the English, love of order and legalistic procedure; and here in America, what you like is something vivid, and red, and swift.”
Source: Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead
“In England, in the Netherlands, in France, from the sixteenth century on, economic and political violence expropriated craftsmen and peasants, repressed indigence and vagrancy, imposed wage-labor on the poor. Between 1930 and 1950, Russia decreed a labor code which included capital punishment in order to organise the transition of millions of peasants to industrial wage-labor in less than a few decades. Seemingly normal facts: that an individual has nothing but his labor power, that he must sell it to a business unit to be able to live, that everything is a commodity, that social relations revolve around market exchange ... such facts now taken for granted result from a long, brutal process.”
Source: The Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement
“In England it is bad manners to be clever, to assert something confidently. It may be your own personal view that two and two make four, but you must not state it in a self-assured way, because this is a democratic country and others may be of a different opinion.”
Source: How to be a Brit: The Classic Bestselling Guide
“In England it is enough for a man to try and produce any serious, beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)
“In England it was enough that Newton was the greatest mathematican of his century; in France he would have been expected to be agreeable too.”
“In England on a hot day, women are happy to walk around with their bra straps showing. In Paris, they don't shave their armpits. And you just can't mention Germany and style in the same book, let alone the same sentence. It's the same story in America too, where the Farrah Fawcett haido of 1975 still reigns supreme. In Italy, even the policemenists look like they've just come off a catwalk. One I found, standing on a rostrum in the middle of a Roman square, was immaculate, as was his routine. Each wave of the hand, each toot of the whistle and each twist of the body was Pans People perfect. Never mind that the traffic was completely ignoring him, he looked good, and that's what mattered. Looking good in Italy is even more important than looking where you're going.”
Source: Motorworld
“In England only uneducated people show off their knowledge; nobody quotes Latin or Greek authors in the course of conversation, unless he has never read them.”
Source: How to be a Brit: The Classic Bestselling Guide
“In England Parliament is above the law. In America the law is above Congress.”
“In England pensions used to be given to aristocrats, because aristocrats had political influence, in order to corrupt them. Here pensions are given to the great democratic mass, because they have political power, to corrupt them.”
Source: What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
“In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
Source: The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde
“In England people are very proud of being very stupid.”
“In England right now you're not good enough until you get validated.”
“In England the boy pats his adored one on the back and says softly, "I don't object, you know." If he is quite mad with passion, he may add: "I rather fancy you, in fact.”
“In England the judges should have independence to protect the people against the crown. Here the judges should not be independent of the people, but be appointed for not more than seven years. The people would always re-elect the good judges.”
“In England the more horses a nobleman has, the more popular he is. So long as the English are devoted to racing, Socialism has no chance with you.”
“In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue - is hypocrisy.”
“In England the practice of "virtual" representation provided reasonably well for the actual representation of the major interests of the society, and it raised no widespread objection.”
Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
“In England the rich own the poor and the men own the women.”
“In England, the struggle between church and kings would take centuries to resolve. Interestingly, in the end, neither institution came out on top. Today, each is as powerless as the other. As people power emerged, we invented politicians. We're not bright.”
Source: A Symphony of Echoes
“In England they always try out new mobile phones in Isle of Man. They've got a captive society. So I said, you should try the legalization of all drugs on the Isle of Man and see what happens.”
“In England they need a king, in Spain they need a king, in France there is no more king. But they consider the president as if he was a king.”
“In England we are sort of very awkward.”
“In England we burnt redheads at the stake, because we thought they were witches. There are still young redheads in Britain getting ripped for having red hair. 'Oy, Ginger!'”
“In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.”
“In England we have this saying about Marmite: people either love it or hate it. That's like a lot of the movie work I've done. People either find it repulsive or find it really interesting and get engaged in it.”
“In England we only make films about the working class or the aristocracy.”
“In England we see people lulled sleep with solid and elaborate discourses of piety, who would be warmed and transported out of themselves by the bellowings and distortions of enthusiasm.”
Source: The Spectator: with notes and general index, from the London stereotype edition ...
“In England when you make a movie even the weather is against you. In Hollywood the weatherman gets a shooting schedule from all the major studios and then figures out where he can fit in a little rain without upsetting Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer too much.”
“In England you have a good phrase. It is 'to bring the game into disrepute.”
“In England you laugh at yourselves, in France we laugh at others.”
“In England you're skewered on the altar of pop culture if you become pretentious.”
“In England, 'Doctor Who' has always been considered a children's show, at least by children.”
“In England, all the English car companies were beginning to circle the drain in a series of well-deserved failures and bankruptcies, earned by making lousy products with very poor production at high prices. So, the government, back in the '70s, nationalized all the British car companies. The result was British Leyland, a name that perhaps doesn't resonate much with you.”
“In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.”
Source: Collins complete works of Oscar Wilde
“In England, and all over Europe, and all over the world, actors act until they die. They get old, really old, and they're still working. They just keep doing it.”
“In England, coffeehouses were dubbed penny-universities, because for the admission price of one cent, a person could sit and be edified all day long by scholars, merchants, travelers, community leaders, gossips, and poets.”
“In England, David and I are big fish in a small pond. But in L.A., we are tiny, tiny, tiny fish in a big pond.”
“In England, enclosure programs kind of destroyed the commons. In the United States, it happened later. But, ah, now it's happening in the world. The last remnant of the commons is the environment, which the indigenous people are still trying to preserve and we sophisticated rich people are trying to destroy.”
“In England, even the poorest of people believe that they have rights; that is very different from what satisfies the poor in other lands.”
“In England, everyone believes if you think, then you don't feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling.”
“In England, football is important for everybody.”
“In England, footballers are respected more, the game is more noble, there's less cheating. Every Spaniard who goes loves it - and comes back a better player. If I had ever left it would have been to England.”
“In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.”
“In England, I was quite struck to see how forward the girls are made--a child of 10 years old, will chat and keep you company, while her parents are busy or out etc.--with the ease of a woman of 26. But then, how does this education go on?--Not at all: it absolutely stops short.”
“In England, I'm this venerable old granddad, the one who always gets pissed at parties and puts a lampshade on his head.”
“In England, I've done a whole bunch of stuff where I just make a complete ass of myself. I've been doing it for 20 years, so I just gravitate toward it anyway. I'd rather do that than do the stuff where I'm supposed to be trying to look cool in some way. It's more interesting to me.”
“In England, if you commit a crime, the police don't have a gun and you don't have a gun. If you commit a crime, the police will say 'Stop, or I'll say stop again.'”
“In England, in France, in no other country would a black man have a chance to get elected. There's no two ways about it. Our country [USA] has been better about dealing with immigration and people who are different from each other than any other country in the world, that I know of.”
“In England, it's a rare thing to see a player smoking but, all in all, I prefer that to an alcoholic. The relationship with alcohol is a real problem in English football and, in the short term, it's much more harmful to a sportsman. It weakens the body, which becomes more susceptible to injury.”
“In England, it's now Sir Ben. Mister has just disappeared. It's not even on my passport anymore. They've taken Mister away from me.”