Quote

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

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
People
Fact
Commodity
Rudiments
Funny
Aliens
Snobbery
Facts
Australia
Australians
Earth
Fancy
Commodities
Soul
Basically
Developments
Matter
Although
Finer
Many
Development
Alien
Believe
Humor
Australian

More quotes by 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
THE British are brave people. They can face anything, except reality.
George Mikes
Image
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
Image
It is great fun dying in the United States of America. It is great fun first of all for the undertakers who make a wonderful living out of it but also for the deceased who suddenly becomes the centre of attention and fuss.
George Mikes
Image
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
Image
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
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
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
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
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 British suffer from a most unfortunate superiority complex - unjustified even under Victoria and most certainly hopelessly out-of-date today.
George Mikes
Image
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
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
Bad English was the second language of Israel and bad Hebrew, of course, remained the national language.
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
Continental people have a sex life the English have hot-water bottles.
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
A dog will flatter you but you have to flatter the cat.
George Mikes
Image
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.
George Mikes
Image
On the Continent stray cats are judged individually on their merit-some are loved, some are only respected in England they are universally worshipped as in ancient Egypt.
George Mikes