Peter Ustinov famous quotes

I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Wine #Italian #Hell

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Love #Life #Marriage

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Peace #Money #War

Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Children #Cutting #Parenting

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Funny #Laughter #Creativity

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Freedom #America #Choices

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.
-- Peter Ustinov

#People #Doubt #Religion

Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Marriage #Sex #Mean

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Sarcastic #Future #Sarcasm

Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Mistake #Intelligent #Gone

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Children #Immortality #Form

Did you know that the worldwide food shortage that threatens up to five hundred million children could be alleviated at the cost of only one day, only one day, of modern warfare.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Peace #Children #Justice

Monica Seles: I'd hate to be next door to her on her wedding night.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Wedding #Hate #Night

The point of living and of being an optimist is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Hope #Wisdom #Believe

There is no question but that if Jesus Christ, or a great prophet from another religion, were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Jesus #Machines #Television

Did you know that every two hours the nations of this world spend as much on armaments as they spend on the children of this world every year?
-- Peter Ustinov

#Peace #Children #Years

Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Giving #Age #Credit

To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Wise #Gentle #Portions

People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom
-- Peter Ustinov

#People #Tree #Bottom

I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer
-- Peter Ustinov

#Office #Diplomats #Taught

Men think about women. Women think about what men think about them
-- Peter Ustinov

#Thinking #Men #Men Women

As I grow older I find that though I think I'm saying the same things as I always did, people listen to me more.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Thinking #People #Grows

Love is an act of endless forgiveness. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Forgiveness #Determination #Work

If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Work #Today #Botticelli

World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable; and when it comes, it will appeal to patriotism in its truest sense,in its only sense, the patriotism of humans who love their national heritages so deeply that they wish to preserve them in safety for the common good.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Government #Safety #Wish

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us
-- Peter Ustinov

#Ambition #Truth Is

Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox - affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Respect #Love Is #Three

Unfortunately, a superabundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares
-- Peter Ustinov

#Dream #Growing #Nightmare

The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Frustration #Social #Alleys

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Life #Education #Mind

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Happiness #Music #Laughter

By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Doors #Today #Size

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Love #Motivational #Family

Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Friendship #Cute Relationship #Sweet

Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Democracy #Way #Corruption

Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Courage #Information #Cowardice

I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool an optimist must know how sad a place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Order #World #Fool

The French and the British are such good enemies that they can't resist being friends.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Enemy #British

And here is the lesson I learned in the army. If you want to do a thing badly, you have to work at it as though you want to do it well.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Army #Want #Lessons

Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Night #Men #Vegetables

Robert Vavra is one of these artists, part magician, part alchemist, who is able to create a series of photographs in unforgettable compositions. Only visible are the dunes, the blinding fields of flowers and the vast sky, the epic intimacy of Robert Vavra's vision.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Flower #Epic #Artist

I hate being moved. I hate that man who came in. So self-righteous, so cruel. He made fun of me, that's why I cried. You never did that. You led me into temptation by your — politeness.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Fun #Hate #Men

Irrespective of nationality, soldiers are always open to the same discomfort and to the same comradeship the world over. I'll make things easy for you if you make things easy for me. That is, after all the unwritten law of the barracks.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Law #Soldier #World

Flogging. The only solution to every problem. I warrant even the culprit himself doesn't know! It was just — his turn!
-- Peter Ustinov

#Problem #Flogging #Culprit

Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Book #Reading #Writing

It's wrong to flog a man. It's against his being a man.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Men

What is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn?
-- Peter Ustinov

#Learning #Process #Persons

We used to have lots of questions to which there were no answers. Now, with the computer, there are lots of answers to which we haven't thought up questions.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Answers #Computer #Used

I believe that the Jews have made a contribution to the human condition out of all proportion to their numbers: I believe them to be an immense people. Not only have they supplied the world with two leaders of the stature of Jesus Christ and Karl Marx, but they have even indulged in the luxury of following neither one nor the other.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Jesus #Believe #Two

I am just a man, not fit to do the work of God... or the Devil.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Men #Devil #Fit

Generals are fascinating cases of arrested development - after all, at five all of us wanted to be generals.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Peace #War #Development

I don't know why I have these dreams. I've never wanted to be Pope. In fact, I have a greater affinity to Martin Luther.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Dream #Facts #Pope

I am convinced that it is of primordial importance to learn more every year than the year before. After all, what is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Education #Years #Process

I'm Rally of Unionist Separist Extremes, sometimes known as the R.U.S.E. … It's the party at present in power.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Party #Sometimes #Extremes

Acting on television is like being asked by the captain to entertain the passengers while the ship goes down.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Acting #Television #Captains

A twinge of conscience is a glimpse of God.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Glimpse #Conscience

American democracy is the inalienable right to sit on your front porch, in your pyjamas, drinking a can of beer and shouting out 'Where else is this possible?' Which doesn't seem to me to be freedom, really.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Drinking #Beer #Democracy

In my day, there were things that were done, and things that were not done, and there was even a way of doing things that were not done.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Work #Way #Done

I had started by imitating a parrot, which is unusual, in that a parrot is supposed to imitate you. By taking the initiative you allow the parrot no alternative but to be itself, which proves again that attack is often the best defence.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Bird #Alternatives #Unusual

Life is unfair but remember sometimes it is unfair in your favour.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Favour #Remember #Life Is

Please keep off the grass.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Life And Death #Grass #Please

Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Sarcasm #Vices #Virtue

At my age, I'm often asked if I'm frightened of death and my reply is always, I can't remember being frightened of birth.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Death #Age #Birth

Laughter... the most civilized music in the world.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Laughter #World #Civilized

I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Daughter #Kings #Honesty

A diplomat these days in nothing, but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Diplomats #These Days #Diplomacy

The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Money #Pay #Bills

The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Cynical #Religion #Atheism

I have four children which is not bad considering I'm not a Catholic.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Children #Catholic #Four

If history teaches us one thing, than that history teaches us nothing.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Teach

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Laughter

There are experts in little things but there are no experts in big things. There are experts in this fact and that fact but there are no moral experts.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Littles #Facts #Experts

The stupidity of a stupid man is mercifully intimate and reticient, while the stupidity of an intellectual is cried from the rooftops.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Stupid #Knowledge #Men

This is a free country, madam. We have a right to share your privacy in a public place.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Country #Luck #Privacy

I think that first nights should come near the end of a play's run-as indeed, they often do.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Running #Night #Thinking

Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Love

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Happiness #Laughter #Joy

Sometimes I wish I could just fall in love. Then, at least you know who your opponent is.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Love #Fall #Wish

Sex is a conversation carried out by another means.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Best Love #Sex #Mean

It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Love #Weapons #Youth

Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique
-- Peter Ustinov

#Unique #Pavarotti #Conscious

At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.
-- Peter Ustinov

#Birthday #Peace #War