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THE British are brave people. They can face anything, except reality.

George Mikes

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George Mikes
Age: 75 †
Born: 1912
Born: February 15
Died: 1987
Died: August 30
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Writer
Siklos
Face
Faces
Reality
Anything
People
British
Brave
Except

More quotes by 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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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
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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.
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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suffer from a most unfortunate superiority complex - unjustified even under Victoria and most certainly hopelessly out-of-date today.
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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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Israelis keep teaching you your own business. God knows everything but the Israelis know everything better.
George Mikes
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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
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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
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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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Humility is one of the most repulsive virtues, nearly always false.
George Mikes
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Once you start buying first aid kits you start having accidents.
George Mikes
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English humor resembles the Loch Ness Monster in that both are famous but there is a strong suspicion that neither exists.
George Mikes
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Although the rudiments of snobbery are there, its finer developments are basically alien to the Australian soul - that is, if Australians have a soul many people believe that they are too matter-of-fact and down-to-earth to have such fancy commodities.
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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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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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
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A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him.
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
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Jokes are better than war. Even the most aggressive jokes are better than the least aggressive wars. Even the longest jokes are better than the shortest wars.
George Mikes
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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