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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
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Journalist
Writer
Siklos
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Gesture
Become
Humor
Instincts
Wells
Lose
Gestures
Well
Loses
Australia
Right
Sleep
Decent
Much
Everybody
Shoulders
Shrug
People
Funny
Instinct
Australians
Wish
National
Temporarily

More quotes by 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.
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They (Americans) have their national game, baseball - which is cricket played with a strong American accent - and they have a national language, entirely their own, unlike any other language spoken on the earth.
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'I don't say a Zionist must be insane,' said President Weizmann, 'but it helps if he is.'
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Japan is, you often feel, an improved version of the United States.
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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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To have created a Welfare State was a great achievement but we must go on to create a Welfare Planet.
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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.
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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.
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On the Continent people have good food in England people have good table manners.
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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.
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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.
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A dog will flatter you but you have to flatter the cat.
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Once you start buying first aid kits you start having accidents.
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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.
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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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In Moscow they do not pay much attention to the living but keep their cemeteries in a splendid state.
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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.
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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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Continental people have a sex life the English have hot-water bottles.
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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.
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