Peter Ustinov
59 quotes
Biography
"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."
"Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious."
"I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine."
"Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died."
"Politicians only get to the top because they have no qualifications to detain them at the bottom."
"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."
"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."
"If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue."
"To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness."
"By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door."
"I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer."
"Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth."
"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."
"Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a superabundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares."
"The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us."
"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."
"It is unfortunate for all that no moral issue has ever been clearer. Any attempt to plea-bargain with outlaws and renegades will only be at the expense of honor, decency and self-respect. The Serbs, are two-dimensional people with a craving for simplicity and an ideology so basic it can be understood without effort. They need enemies, not friends, to focus their two-dimensional ideas. Life for them is a simple tune, never an orchestration, or even a pleasant harmony. Animals make use of their resources with far greater felicity than these retorted creatures, whose subscription to the human race is well in arrears."
"Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique."
"Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them."
"Sex is a conversation carried out by other means."
"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich."
"I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins."
"The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill."
"Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy."
"Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of."