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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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George Mikes
Age: 75 †
Born: 1912
Born: February 15
Died: 1987
Died: August 30
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Writer
Siklos
Right
Sleep
Decent
Much
Everybody
Shoulders
Shrug
People
Funny
Instinct
Australians
Wish
National
Temporarily
Business
None
Gesture
Become
Humor
Instincts
Wells
Lose
Gestures
Well
Loses
Australia

More quotes by 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suffer from a most unfortunate superiority complex - unjustified even under Victoria and most certainly hopelessly out-of-date today.
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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.
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In Moscow they do not pay much attention to the living but keep their cemeteries in a splendid state.
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On the Continent people have good food in England people have good table manners.
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You can keep a dog: but it is the cat who keeps people, because cats find humans useful domestic animals.
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Tel-Aviv airport is still the only airport in the world where each passenger is met by ten relatives.
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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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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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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.
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The Japanese are human beings like the rest of us, but they will strongly resent this insinuation.
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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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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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.
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Many Continentals think life is a game the English think cricket is a game.
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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Continental people have a sex life the English have hot-water bottles.
George Mikes
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A dog will flatter you but you have to flatter the cat.
George Mikes
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Australia objects to the mini-skirt not on moral but on economic grounds. Australians are no prudes and the lovely, healthy, sporty Australian girls have no reason to hide their knees and thighs. However, the mini-skirt is disastrous for the wool-trade.
George Mikes
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The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their heads together and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it. To the eternal glory of British science, their labour bore fruit.
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