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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

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George Mikes
Age: 75 †
Born: 1912
Born: February 15
Died: 1987
Died: August 30
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More quotes by George Mikes

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Remember that those five hundred words an average Englishman uses are far from being the whole vocabulary of the language. You may learn another five hundred and another five thousand and yet another fifty thousand and still you may come across a further fifty thousand you have never heard of before, and nobody else either.
George Mikes
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A dog will flatter you but you have to flatter the cat.
George Mikes
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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
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If it is gay, ribald and lascivious night-life you are after, Israel is not the place for you. The night clubs you do find are nearer in spirit to a YMCA than to dens of iniquity.
George Mikes
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'I don't say a Zionist must be insane,' said President Weizmann, 'but it helps if he is.'
George Mikes
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Tel-Aviv airport is still the only airport in the world where each passenger is met by ten relatives.
George Mikes
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Israelis keep teaching you your own business. God knows everything but the Israelis know everything better.
George Mikes
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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
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THE British are brave people. They can face anything, except reality.
George Mikes
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It is often said that the Japanese are extremely clean at home, or inside any house or office, but dirty and untidy outside. 'Go and look at a railway station,' I was told, 'and you'll be horrified.' I went and was horrified horrified by the cleanliness of the place.
George Mikes
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Israel also deprived the world of its chance of shedding tears of genuine sympathy over her destruction. The world resents this it likes to feel noble and sympathetic.
George Mikes
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Travel' is the name of a modern disease which became rampant in themid-fifties and is still spreading. The disease - its scientific name is travelitis furiosus - is carried by a germ called prosperity.
George Mikes
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People on the Continent either tell you the truth or lie in England they hardly ever lie, but they would not dream of telling you the truth.
George Mikes
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The British suffer from a most unfortunate superiority complex - unjustified even under Victoria and most certainly hopelessly out-of-date today.
George Mikes
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Bad English was the second language of Israel and bad Hebrew, of course, remained the national language.
George Mikes
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Humility is one of the most repulsive virtues, nearly always false.
George Mikes
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Japan is, you often feel, an improved version of the United States.
George Mikes
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The poor Americans are so busy defending the rights of Hindus in Pakistan, Moslems in India, Jews in Palestine, Koreans in Japan, Italians in Yugoslavia and Hungarians in Czechoslovakia that they simply cannot give a thought to Negroes in the United States.
George Mikes
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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
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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