British Airways Quotes

As a long-time British Airways advisor, I have seen first-hand that as a company they are committed to innovation, entrepreneurship and the Bay Area community. UnGrounded is strong proof of that commitment. ~ Rhonda Abrams

The unions need to be taken on. British Airways is massively over-staffed and has got to get its costs down ... The problem for [chief executive] Willie Walsh is that the board of BA has no spine, no balls and no vision. ~ Michael O'Leary

We've always had a pretty competitive and pretty ferocious battle with British Airways ... It's lasted now about 14 years, and we're very pleased to have survived it. ~ Richard Branson

You see, it's essential that one of us stays awake during the flight [ballon]. So, rather than using the comfortable Virgin seats which we used to cross the Atlantic, we've asked British Airways for two of theirs. ~ Richard Branson

British Airways: No one is actually going to save the environment, so you might as well enjoy it while it lasts. ~ David Mitchell

At university level, I had an economics lecturer who used to joke that I was the only student who handed in essays on British Airways notepaper. ~ Sebastian Coe

Operation Pedro Pan
It was like a raging wildfire that the Radio Swan story spread throughout Cuba! Many affluent Cubans, convinced that their children would actually be sent to Moscow for political indoctrination, panicked and sent their children to Florida. In all, as many as 14,000 Cuban children were airlifted to Miami, under a program named "Operation Peter Pan." During the next two years, British Airways, under charter, flew many of the children to the United States by way of Kingston, Jamaica.
The unaccompanied children started arriving in Miami in October of 1960. They arrived in waves, with the children of the more affluent families coming first. Their parents trusted their friends and family in the United States to take care of their children. Since the Castro régime was having economic difficulties very few people thought that it would last as long as it did. Most of them still believed that Castro was just a passing phenomenon until a counter-revolution would depose him. ~ Hank Bracker

When I fly British Airways, I can't help but read the free Daily Mail, which makes me glad I am leaving the country. ~ Martin Parr

Kershaw had long ago realized, apparently, that dealing with Brits was tricky. You had to listen to what a Brit was saying - which was invariably that he thought XYZ was a terrific idea and he hoped it went very well for you - while at the same time paying heed to the greasy, nauseous suspicion you had that, although every word and phrase indicated approval, somehow the sum of the whole was that you'd have to be a mental pygmy to come up with this plan and a complete fucking idiot to pursue it. After six years working with the Brits in various theatres he'd come to the conclusion that they didn't do it on purpose. The thing was, Brits actually thought that subtext was plain text. To a Brit, the modern English language was vested with hundreds of years of unbroken history and cultural nuance, so that every single word had a host of implications depending on who said it to whom, when, and how. British soldiers, for example, gave entire reports to their commanders by the way they said 'good morning, sir' and then had to spend half an hour telling them the detail, which was why the Brits always looked bored in briefings. They could sense the trajectory of the conversation, knew the bad news was coming now and the good news now and that there was a question on the end which needed thinking about. With a bit of work they could deduce the question, too, but they always waited politely for it to be asked so that no one felt rushed. ~ Nick Harkaway

I was one of those kids who thought I could be the president of England when I grew up if I wanted to. Then I started acting and realized life is hard and people are mean. And there's no president of England and I'm not British. ~ Riley Keough

I'm three quarters Scottish, but I sound English. I don't really see British as a race. ~ Joanna Lumley

More than 80 per cent of the British casualties of the Great War were English. More than 80 per cent of the taxation is paid by the English taxpayers. We are entitled to mention these facts, and to draw authority and courage from them. ~ Winston Churchill

I think what is British about me is my feelings and awareness of others and their situations. English people are always known to be well mannered and cold but we are not cold - we don't interfere in your situation. If we are heartbroken, we don't scream in your face with tears - we go home and cry on our own. ~ Michael Caine

I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the action of two tarts. ~ Harold Macmillan

You're from where?"
"Lay'en. It's near Salt Lake City."
"Spell that for me."
"Um, that would be S-A-L-T-"
"No, the other one. The city you're from."
"Oh. L-A-Y-T-O-N."
"Ah-Lay-ton."
That's what I said."
"No you didn't. You just said, 'Lay'en.'"
"So I did. But just go ahead and pronounce 'aluminum' for me, Mr. British Man. How are you going to defend that piece of insanity? Why don't you spell it and count syllables and see if your al-um-in-ium makes sense whatsoever?"
He bowed his head. "Touché... ~ Shannon Hale

He obliterates things, she realized. He shatters them. They think they've won because he's a bit vague and he waffles, but that only goes so far. It's his shell, like a tortoise, if a tortoise was soft on the outside and dangerous on the inside. That's how the Time War ended: he got to the bottom of his patience, and he took two entire civilisations out of the universe and lock them away, and one of them was his own. That's how sharp his sense of obligation is.
And he lives like that. He does it all the time. ~ Nick Harkaway

There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Many critics of the Crusades would seem to suppose that after the Muslims had overrun a major portion of Christendom, they should have been ignored or forgiven; suggestions have been made about turning the other cheek. This outlook is certainly unrealistic and probably insincere. Not only had the Byzantines lost most of their empire; the enemy was at their gates. And the loss of Spain, Sicily, and southern Italy, as well as a host of Mediterranean islands, was bitterly resented in Europe. Hence, as British historian Derek Lomax (1933-1992) explained, 'The popes, like most Christians, believed war against the Muslims to be justified partly because the latter had usurped by force lands which once belonged to Christians and partly because they abused the Christians over whom they ruled and such Christian lands as they could raid for slaves, plunder and the joys of destruction.' It was time to strike back. ~ Rodney Stark

The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen's lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire. ~ Winston Churchill

When the British retreated after a skirmish in the revolutionary war, American troops found Masonic regalia and a book of constitutions left in the encampment the British had abandoned. General Washington himself returned the Masonic artifacts to the British troops, under a flag of truce, accompanied by an escort and a guard of honor. ~ Steven L. Harrison

First Europe, and then the globe, will be linked by flight, and nations so knit together that they will grow to be next-door neighbors ... What railways have done for nations, airways will do for the world. ~ Claude Grahame-White

I spend a fair chunk of time in Los Angeles, and after about ten days of warmth and unbroken clear skies, you start to yearn for a bit of good old British gloom and rain! ~ Sean Bean

Shetland is the most remote place in the U.K. It's a part our country, but completely unique. It might be British, but it's closer to Norway than to Edinburgh, and it feels very different from the mainland. ~ Ann Cleeves

Canada's eminent position today is a tribute to the patience, tolerance, and strength of character of her people, of both French and British strains. For Canada is enriched by the heritage of France as well as of Britain, and Quebec has imparted the vitality and spirit of France itself to Canada. Canada's notable achievement of national unity and progress through accommodation, moderation and forbearance can be studied with profit by her sister nations. ~ Harry S. Truman

I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British instead of the other way around, I might have gotten here on my own. ~ Winston Churchill

British Columbia has been described as a banana republic, only with bigger bananas, ~ John Vaillant

If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition is just, the British constitution is nothing more or less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government's being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend. ~ John Adams

I don't know why we keep building these fucking dams," Adams said in a surprisingly forceful British whisper. "Not only do they cause environmental and social disasters, they, with very few exceptions, all fail to do what they were supposed to do in the first place. Look at the Amazon, where they've all silted up. What is the reaction to that? They're going to build another eighty of them. It's just balmy. We must have beaver genes or something ... There's just this kind of sensational desire to build dams, and maybe that should be looked at and excised from human nature. Maybe the Human Genome Project can locate the beaver/dam-building gene and cut that out. ~ Douglas Adams

We are in Buckingham Palace, the very heart of the British nation. Sherlock Holmes, put your trousers on! ~ Mycroft Holmes

A traditional fixture at Wimbledon is the way the BBC TV commentary box fills up with British players eliminated in the early rounds. ~ Clive James

VARANASI TRAFFIC is shambolic. It's a humbling reminder that the British drive on the left side of the road and we (Indians) drive on what's left of the road. "The traffic is not terrible at all," wrote novelist Geoff Dyer. "It is beyond any idea of terribleness. It is beyond any idea of traffic. ~ Guru Madhavan

As for the British churchman, he goes to church as he goes to the bathroom, with the minimum of fuss and no explanation if he can help it. ~ Ronald Blythe

The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensity ~ Joe Perry

Those who came to the United States didn't realize they were white until they got here. They were told they were white. They had to learn they were white. An Irish peasant coming from British imperial abuse in Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s, arrives in the United States. You ask him or her what they are. They say, "I am Irish." No, you're white. "What do you mean, I am white?" And they point me out. "Oh, I see what you mean. This is a strange land." ~ Cornel West

Most British people are keen to remain in a European free trade zone; and most EU states are keen to keep us there, because we buy from them more than we sell to them to the tune of £40 million per day. ~ Daniel Hannan

One of the things about being raised British in Africa is that you get this double whammy of toughness. The continent in place itself made you quite tough. And then you've got this British mother whose entire being rejects 'coddling' in case it makes you too soft. So there's absolutely nothing standing between you and a fairly rough experience. ~ Alexandra Fuller

I am confident that in the end freedom and democracy will prevail over terror and tyranny. We will win this war on terror - and when we do Americans, the British, Iraqis, and people around the world will be more secure. ~ Doc Hastings

Amazing what the British do with language; the nuances of politeness. The world's great diplomats, surely. ~ Anne Rice