British History Quotes

No medieval monarch in the whole of British history ever had such power as every modern British Prime Minister has in his or her hands. Nor does any American President have power approaching this ~ Tony Benn

On the whole, however, it was accepted that money not only talked, but governed. All the industrialist had to get to be accepted among the governors of society was enough money. ~ Eric J. Hobsbawm

The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight. ~ Barbara Tuchman

The reality of life in Northern Ireland is that if you were Protestant, you learned British history, and if you were Catholic, you learned Irish history in school. ~ James Nesbitt

As a means of alleviating poverty, Christian charity was worse than useless, as could be seen in the Papal states, which abounded in it. But it was popular not only among the traditionalist rich, who cherished it as a safeguard against the evil of equal rights... but also among the traditionalist poor, who were profoundly convinced that they had a right to crumbs from the rich man's table. ~ Eric J. Hobsbawm

Listening to the shrill rhetoric of hard line Brexiteers - either extolling the virtues of a 'no deal' Brexit, or suggesting its inevitability is simply down to the intransigence of the EU - I am reminded of another great folly in British history: 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. It is as if we are witnessing a modern day re-enactment of that foolhardy military manoeuvre in which a mix of poor communication, rash decisions and vainglorious personalities led to the needless massacre of countless cavalrymen. Messrs. Fox, Johnson and Rees-Mogg may relish the idea of charging headlong into battle against a well prepared and strongly defended position, immune to the ensuing casualties and collateral damage. It would be appreciated if they could kindly leave the rest of us out of their futile and reckless endeavours. ~ Alex Morritt

Henry VIII, for example, who was king of England from 1509 to 1547, ended his days surrounded by a great many young people for the simple reason that he'd had most of his old courtiers exiled or executed. Between the years 1532 and 1540 alone, Henry ordered 330 political executions, probably more than any other ruler in British history. If you worked for Henry VIII, then you really didn't need to worry about putting money into your pension fund as you probably wouldn't live long enough to spend it. ~ John Connolly

Those Victorians: endlessly fascinating, broad in their learning, heroic in their achievements, in parts completely mad. ~ Simon Heffer

In Great Britain, woman was subordinate and confined. But at least she was also safe. ~ Linda Colley

Most Britons still lived and died without encountering anyone whose skin colour was different from their own. Slaves, in short, did not threaten, at least as far as the British at home were concerned. Bestowing freedom upon them seemed therefore purely an act of humanity and will, an achievement that would be to Great Britain's economic detriment, perhaps, but would have few other domestic consequences. ~ Linda Colley

In Britain, these Jewish refugees were greeted with a mixture of grudging acceptance by some and open hostility by others. ~ Thomas Harding

Benedict Arnold was appointed to the rank of general in the Continental Army by George Washington during the American War of Independence. It was up to him to protect the fortifications at West Point, New York, which in 1802 became the U.S. Military Academy. Arnold however planned to surrender his command to the British forces. When his treasonous act was discovered Arnold fled down the Hudson River to the British sloop-of-war Vulture, avoiding capture by the forces of George Washington, who had previously been alerted to the plot. Arnold was hailed a hero by the British, who gave him a commission in the British Army as brigadier general. In the winter of 1782, after the war, he moved to London with his wife where he was received as a hero by King George III. In the United States his name "Benedict Arnold" became synonyms for the words "TRAITOR & TREASON."
Cohorting with a foreign power to overthrow the government or purposely aiding the enemy is an act of Treason! ~ Hank Bracker

Britain, the first industrial nation, had offered the world a remarkable public experiment in liberal, capitalist democracy whose success was premised upon free trade and world peace. Tuesday, 4 August 1914 brought that experiment to an abrupt halt. ~ Kenneth O. Morgan

I was born in the '60s and grew up in the '70s - not exactly the best decade for food in British history. It was horrendous. It was a time when, as a nation, we excelled in art and music and acting and photography and fashion - all creative skills ... all apart from cooking. ~ Heston Blumenthal

The wisest fool in Christendom. ~ King James I

Contrary to received wisdom, the British are not an insular people in the conventional sense - far from it. For most of their early modern and modern history, they have had more contact with more parts of the world than almost any other nation - it is just that this contact has regularly taken the form of aggressive military and commercial enterprise. ~ Linda Colley

The course of George St. Leger Grenfell's life was a continuing act of violence against the sanctities of Victorian life, and especially against its inmost essence, the family. And indeed, the large Grenfell family was an overpowering aggregation, even by the ample Victorian standard. ~ Stephen Z. Starr

I went back in British history. Some 204 people died there after a mine collapsed in 1838. In 1866, 361 miners died in Britain. In an explosion in 1894, 290 people died there ... These are usual things. ~ Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep ... For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that an' Chuck him out, the brute! But it's Saviour of his country, when the guns begins to shoot! ~ Rudyard Kipling

Historians usually focus their attention on the past of countries that still exist, writing hundreds and thousands of books on British history, French history, German history, Russian history, American history, Chinese history, Indian history, Brazilian history or whatever. Whether consciously or not, they are seeking the roots of the present, thereby putting themselves in danger of reading history backwards. As soon as great powers arise, whether the United States in the twentieth century or China in the twenty-first, the call goes out for offerings on American History or Chinese History, and siren voices sing that today's important countries are also those whose past is most deserving of examination, that a more comprehensive spectrum of historical knowledge can be safely ignored. ~ Norman Davies

In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have promised, not just instruction but pleasure. ~ Simon Schama

The days are numbered for those bums over in England."
German Tank commander ~ Leo McKinstry

There is little doubt that, until 1846 when he helped to engineer the resignation of Robert Peel, Disraeli was driven by an ambition to make his mark rather than by any consistent political purpose, and that his attacks on Peel would have not have been so mounted had he been given in 1841 the office for which he had asked. ~ Christopher Hibbert

We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us. ~ A. N. Wilson

Jews show so near an affinity to you ... Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism? ~ Benjamin Disraeli

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go! ~ Oliver Cromwell

As well as might we say that a ship is built, loaded and manned for the sake of any particular pilot, instead of acknowledging that the pilot is made for the sake of the ship, her lading, and her crew, who are always the owners in the political vessel; as to say that kingdoms were instituted for kings, not kings for kingdoms. ~ Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

I called the New World into existence, to redress the balance of the Old. ~ George Canning

There is a golden thread which runs through British history of the individual, standing firm against tyranny and then of the individual participating in his society ~ Gordon Brown

The Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

Until quite recently women's histories were largely overlooked but in the wake of feminism there has been increasing interest in retrieving them. ~ Alison Weir

If, then, this civilization is to be saved, if it is not to be submerged by centuries of barbarism, but to secure the treasures ofits inheritance on new and more stable foundations, there is indeed need for those now living fully to realize how far the decay has already progressed. ~ Johan Huizinga

A vicious boredom ruled the world, for the first time in human history, interrupted by meaningless acts of violence. ~ J.G. Ballard

Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can't get out. ~ Richard M. Nixon

I want to experience that massive adrenalin rush when you step into a new stadium, all the more so when that Olympic Stadium is packed full of people waving British flags. ~ Jessica Ennis

He didn't much like reading novels - he preferred history or philosophy - or poetry, although he could read only a little poetry at a time, because when a poem "spoke to him" it was as if a brilliant, agonizing light had been turned upon some tiny, private cell of his soul. ~ Claire Messud

This history has for so long lived like a spider in my breast. The spider spins and spins, catching memories in its web, threatening to devour every final happiness. With this letter I hope to sweep away the terror and the sadness and to have my heart made pure again by God's grace. ~ Kathleen Kent

The white woman across the aisle from me says 'Look,
look at all the history, that house
on the hill there is over two hundred years old, '
as she points out the window past me

into what she has been taught. I have learned
little more about American history during my few days
back East than what I expected and far less
of what we should all know of the tribal stories

whose architecture is 15,000 years older
than the corners of the house that sits
museumed on the hill. 'Walden Pond, '
the woman on the train asks, 'Did you see Walden Pond? '

and I don't have a cruel enough heart to break
her own by telling her there are five Walden Ponds
on my little reservation out West
and at least a hundred more surrounding Spokane,

the city I pretended to call my home. 'Listen, '
I could have told her. 'I don't give a shit
about Walden. I know the Indians were living stories
around that pond before Walden's grandparents were born

and before his grandparents' grandparents were born.
I'm tired of hearing about Don-fucking-Henley saving it, too,
because that's redundant. If Don Henley's brothers and sisters
and mothers and father hadn't come here in the first place

then nothing would need to be saved.'
But I didn't say a word to the woman about Walden
Pond because she smiled so much and seemed delighted
that I thought to b ~ Sherman Alexie

If you will study the history of Christ's ministry from Baptism to Ascension, you will discover that it is mostly made up of little words, little deeds, little prayers, little sympathies, adding themselves together in unwearied succession. The Gospel is full of divine attempts to help and heal, in the body, mind and heart, individual men. The completed beauty of Christ's life is only the added beauty of little inconspicuous acts of beauty -- talking with the woman at the well; going far up into the North country to talk with the Syrophenician woman; showing the young ruler the stealthy ambition laid away in his heart, that kept him out of the kingdom of Heaven; shedding a tear at the grave of Lazarus; teaching a little knot of followers how to pray; preaching the Gospel one Sunday afternoon to two disciples going out to Emmaus; kindling a fire and broiling fish, that His disciples might have a breakfast waiting for them when they came ashore after a night of fishing, cold, tired, discouraged. All of these things, you see, let us in so easily into the real quality and tone of God's interests, so specific, so narrowed down, so enlisted in what is small, so engrossed in what is minute. ~ Charles Henry Parkhurst

I don't know how history is taught here in Japan, " he told the audience when he traveled there in 1985 to give an acceptance speech, "but in the United States in my college days, most of the time was spent on the study of political leaders and wars – Ceasars, Napoleons, and Hitlers. I think this is totally wrong. The important people and events of history are the thinkers and innovators, the Darwins, Newtons, Beethovens whose work continues to grow in influence in a positive fashion ~ Jon Gertner

After two world wars, the collapse of fascism, nazism, communism and colonialism and the end of the cold war, humanity has entered a new phase of its history. ~ Hans Kung

Now he saw the familiar wide river beside the path differently. He saw all of the light and color and history it contained and carried in its slow - moving water; and he knew that there was an Elsewhere from which it came, and an Elsewhere to which it was going ~ Lois Lowry

I will be on the look out for you, my dear girl," he wrote. "You must expect to give yourself up when you come." For this buttoned-up age, for Burnham, it was a letter that could have steamed itself open. ~ Erik Larson

While twentieth-century physicists were not able to identify any convincing mathematical constants underlying the fine structure, partly because such thinking has normally not been encouraged, a revolutionary suggestion was recently made by the Czech physicist Raji Heyrovska, who deduced that the fine structure constant, ...really is defined by the [golden] ratio .... ~ Carl Johan Calleman

Yes, I won the Bafta. I thought the British were very intelligent. ~ Eli Wallach

It is incumbent on us diligently to remember that the kingdom of heaven was promised to the poor in spirit, and that minds afflicted by calamity and the contempt of mankind cheerfully listen to the divine promise of future happiness; while, on the contrary, the fortunate are satisfied with the possession of this world; and the wise abuse in doubt and dispute their vain superiority of reason and knowledge. ~ Edward Gibbon

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Though mortal Men have little life beside the span of the Elves, they would rather spend it in battle than fly or submit. The defiance of Húrin Thalion is a great deed; and though Morgoth slay the doer he cannot make the deed not to have been. Even the Lords of the West will honour it; and is it not written into the history of Arda, which neither Morgoth nor Manwë can unwrite? ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Something went greatly wrong in our collective history and the starting point of it was the industrial revolution. Our school systems are focussed on a single objective: to produce model citizens for society in order to feed this machine and prevent its breakdown. That's why our school systems have no interest in developing models that actually require and stimulate useful values in people, such as courage or imagination or inventiveness.
None of these are taught in our schools, on the contrary the system focuses on memorizing. Memorizing is a way of overloading the mind with mental baggage it doesn't really need. Besides being horribly dull and stiffening the effect of 20 years of abundant memorization training is modern man: an unimaginative creature stuffed with useless knowledge and unable to clean his mind of this information dirt: our school systems are purposely constructed to deliver mental automatons that are unable to think creatively. ~ Martijn Benders

It is only a woman who can make a man feel like a 'superhero' or 'inadequate'.
Its her attention and admiration that a man desperately seeks! ~ Sanjai Velayudhan

Scandal, it bears repeating, undermines monarchies, but rarely ends them. It may be true that, according to a recent editorial in the New York Times, the British monarchy now exists primarily 'for our amusement'. But as long as people find it amusing, and want to be amused by it, they will be happy to see it undermined but uneager to kill it off. ~ David Cannadine

It takes all sorts to make a world - saints as well as soldiers. ~ Anthony Anderson

The headmistress was an able instructress in French and history and we learned with her as fast as fear could teach us. ~ Cyril Connolly

It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

They say love can conquer all, right? But what if it's unrequited? Does it still stand? I'm starting to think otherwise. How can one person try to hold up a relationship that has so much history when it feels like a thousand-pound weight? ~ Ally Williams

This is a proud moment for our city. This is the first time we have won a Finals game in this city, and I'm happy to be part of the history. ~ LeBron James

The cost of contemplating history is often an uneasy conscience. ~ Richard Kluger

History dressed up in the glow of love's kiss turned grief into beauty. ~ Aberjhani

While Leonidas was preparing to make his stand, a Persian envoy arrived. The envoy explained to Leonidas the futility of trying to resist the advance of the Great King's army and demanded that the Greeks lay down their arms and submit to the might of Persia. Leonidas laconically told Xerxes, Come and get them. ~ Plutarch

Obviously people's feelings are going to get hurt when you use certain words, but you can't outlaw words. They're really the history of our culture. They tell you what's going on. When you make words politically incorrect you're taking all the poetry out of the language. I'm pro anybody living their lives the way they want to live, sexually and otherwise; and I'm anti any kind of language repression. ~ David Duchovny

Muslims pursued knowledge to the edges of the earth. Al-Biruni, the central Asian polymath, is arguably the world's first anthropologist. The great linguists of Iraq and Persia laid the foundations a thousand years ago for subjects only now coming to the forefront in language studies. Ibn Khaldun, who is considered the first true scientific historian, argued hundreds of years ago that history should be based upon facts and not myths or superstitions. The great psychologists of Islam known as the Sufis wrote treatise after treatise that rival the most advanced texts today on human psychology. The great ethicists and exegetes of Islam's past left tomes that fill countless shelves in the great libraries of the world, and many more of their texts remain in manuscript form.
In the foreword of "Being Muslim. A Practical Guide" by Dr. Asad Tarsin. ~ Hamza Yusuf

It was hard to get jobs on farms doing wool-classing, but I got them. They had to learn to like a female wool-classer. ~ Theresa Sjoquist

Hidden from History: 300 Years of Women's Oppression and the Fight Against It, London: Pluto Press, 1973. ~ Philippa Gregory

If you are a student, be also a student of the body ... realizing that a broad chest, a muscular pair of arms, and two sinewy legs, will be just as much credit to you, and stand you in hand through your future life, equally with your geometry, your history, your classics, your law, medicine, or divinity. Let nothing divert you from your duty to your body ~ Walt Whitman

Mandela means a lot to the world. He's something special. There's only a few people in the history of mankind with that kind of charisma. ~ Ruud Gullit

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn't very interesting. ~ Stephen King

perhaps, all these years, historians had been unwilling to recognize history as a spiral because a spiral was so difficult to describe. was war, then, the big solution after all? war the great aphrodisiac, the great source of world adrenalin, the solvent of ennui, angst, melancholia, accidia, spleen? war itself a massive sexual act. -war, finally, the controller, the trimmer & excisor; the justifier of fertility?" --the Wanting Seed/Burgess ~ Tony Burgess