Quote

In England only uneducated people show off their knowledge nobody quotes Latin or Greek authors in the course of conversation, unless he has never read them.

George Mikes

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

George Mikes
Age: 75 †
Born: 1912
Born: February 15
Died: 1987
Died: August 30
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Writer
Siklos
Courses
Uneducated
Course
Authors
Knowledge
Latin
Show
Greek
Read
England
Shows
Conversation
Never
Unless
People
Nobody
Quotes

More quotes by George Mikes

Image
I have often thought that the aim of port is to give you a good and durable hangover, so that during the next day you should be reminded of the splendid occasion the night before.
George Mikes
Image
Television is of great educational value. It teaches you while still young how to (a) kill, (b) rob, (c) embezzle, (d) shoot, (e) poison, and, generally speaking, (f) how to grow up into a Wild West outlaw or gangster by the time you leave school.
George Mikes
Image
The Japanese are human beings like the rest of us, but they will strongly resent this insinuation.
George Mikes
Image
English humor resembles the Loch Ness Monster in that both are famous but there is a strong suspicion that neither exists.
George Mikes
Image
Australians are decent people with the right instincts and they wish everybody well but if all is not well, it is none of their business and they will not lose too much sleep over it. The shrug of the shoulders has become - only temporarily, I daresay - the national gesture of Australia.
George Mikes
Image
It was decided almost two hundred years ago that English should be the language spoken in the United States. It is not known, however, why this decision has not been carried out.
George Mikes
Image
'I don't say a Zionist must be insane,' said President Weizmann, 'but it helps if he is.'
George Mikes
Image
A great deal of the pupils time was spent going through, once again, the History of the Communist (Bolshevik) Party of the Soviet Union. He had learnt it at elementary school at secondary school at his sports club at the Komsomol at the university at a folk dancing course at the chess-club.
George Mikes
Image
THE British are brave people. They can face anything, except reality.
George Mikes
Image
To be extravagant you need money. True. But you do not need your own money.
George Mikes
Image
In Moscow they do not pay much attention to the living but keep their cemeteries in a splendid state.
George Mikes
Image
Long before the word Zionism was uttered for the first time, old religious Jews came from all over the world to die in Jerusalem. It is the finest place to die in - it has always been acknowledged. It has a joie de mourir quite its own.
George Mikes
Image
I said in my earlier book, and find no reason for retracting my statement, that the famous Jewish sense of humour got lost in transit to Israel.
George Mikes
Image
When a wicked and unworthy subject annoyed the Sultan of Turkey or the Czar of Russia, he had his head cut of without much ceremony but when the same happened in England, the monarch declared : We are not amused.
George Mikes
Image
In England the boy pats his adored one on the back and says softly, I don't object, you know. If he is quite mad with passion, he may add: I rather fancy you, in fact.
George Mikes
Image
The country has always been governed by a coalition but today it is governed by a so-called Grand Coalition which is a more polite word for all and sundry.
George Mikes
Image
The Art of Conversation could not die in Australia it never lived. Television did not kill it there was nothing there to kill.
George Mikes
Image
Bargaining is a repulsive habit compromise is one of the highest human virtues - the difference between the two being that the first is practised on the Continent, the latter in Great Britain.
George Mikes
Image
The man who is not afraid of danger is not a hero, but a psychopath.
George Mikes
Image
To have created a Welfare State was a great achievement but we must go on to create a Welfare Planet.
George Mikes