British Influence Quotes

I’m not intellectually convinced that one-man, one-vote is the best. We practise it because that’s what the British bequeathed us

My comedic instinct, is a little bit more rooted in - my mother's British so I've always been more of the dry receiver of the crazy as opposed to the initiator of the crazy. I'm kind of predisposed to be the straight man.

No one in my family had ever attended school [...] On the first day of school my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why this particular name I have no idea.

At first, I found the music I was making really hard to find a home for. I felt like my attitude was really British, but not the actual sounds I was making. Back in 2003, when I made 'Galang,' there were no clubs that had an 'anything and everything' attitude.

Independence day is an interesting time to reflect on our strange fealty to institutions that the British left us, including those that were explicitly set up to be used against us.

First of all, when you live in a country like Canada, it's quite different from America in the sense that it's very tied to traditions that were born in Britain.

In India, we are forced to choose our specialisation very early, whereas in some other countries, this can be done much later in life. While the British have abandoned this approach, we in India seem to be struggling with the old British system of education.

We are not quitters. Britain has always gone out there; we have probably been more influential than any other country in shaping our world and the way it has thought about itself, the way we interact as nations.

The EU is an English-speaking power. The single market was a British idea…. If you refuse please don’t expect us to help you wreck or paralyze the EU.

We've never adopted Americanisms. We are a very British band from a very British cultural scene. We fly that flag and that is something I enjoy.

'Captives' was a deliberate bridging exercise, an attempt to use detailed knowledge of what Britain was like on the inside, to reach a deeper, more variegated understanding of how its peoples experienced external adventures and aggression over a quarter of a millennium in four continents.

I think there is a very strong sense of Irish identity, and I think partly that's to do with the fact that we have evolved differently from Britain and other countries in Europe.

It's because Gandhi believed in villages and because the British ruled from the cities; therefore, Nehru thought of New Delhi as an un-Indian city.

To me, British fashion has a story. It has history, and I feel it's very much about our culture.

From Tangiers to Alexandria, the entire African coast of the Mediterranean, with the exception of the great Libyan desert, belongs either to France or to England. Italy, the Mediterranean nation par excellence, is virtually excluded from the control of the Mediterranean; she is imprisoned and besieged in her own ocean.

I like whimsy and satire, and that's what Americans like so much about Brits. We bring subtlety and sense of humor that you sometimes lack. We have a very long history of importing Brits like Christopher Hitchens who are better at it than Americans are.

Canada evolved within the British Empire: it inherited the Parliamentary system, the Cabinet system and all the other features of the British constitutional system which had been in place, for the most part, for several centuries before Canada was even thought of.

Britain's place in the world is one uniquely suited to thriving in the complex new reality of global politics. We are a key anchor of a rules-based system in international affairs that many across the globe look to for stable and effective governance and leadership. We are a beacon that shines brightly the light of freedom and democracy.

The Crown as a symbol of sovereignty encourages British Canadians to ignore their own failure to build a united nation by allowing them an illusory participation in a history and a greatness not properly theirs.

You can suddenly have a series of countries waking up and saying, 'I want the same status as the Brits,' which will be, de facto, the dismantling of the rest of Europe.

Brits are cool at the moment. We've taken over the world, what with 'Game of Thrones', 'Downton Abbey', One Direction... to be British is to be fashionable.

The U.K. is so important to me. It's everything - it's my home. I love America, but it's so important for me to be here and be an artist and be well known here.

Until such measures are taken by our government as will effectually prohibit all [British] intercourse or traffic [with the Sioux], the Citizens of the United States can never enjoy, but partially, those important advantages which the navigation of the Missouri now presents …. the Sioux will be made to feel their dependence on the will of our government for their supplies of merchandise, and in the course of two or three years, they may probably be reduced to order without the necessity of bloodshed.

I believe that a large part of the training in the regional theaters is in imitation of the British style of acting. The British orientation is textual; they start from the language and work toward the character.

The Brits was an amazing place to get a broad musical education. But I never really thought I was going to be a singer because there was always someone better than me in my class.