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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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George Mikes
Age: 75 †
Born: 1912
Born: February 15
Died: 1987
Died: August 30
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Writer
Siklos
Nothing
Kill
Never
Lived
Conversation
Humor
Television
Dies
Funny
Art
Australia

More quotes by George Mikes

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I have often thought that the aim of port is to give you a good and durable hangover, so that during the next day you should be reminded of the splendid occasion the night before.
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The man who is not afraid of danger is not a hero, but a psychopath.
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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.
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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 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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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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A dog will flatter you but you have to flatter the cat.
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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The Japanese are human beings like the rest of us, but they will strongly resent this insinuation.
George Mikes
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To have created a Welfare State was a great achievement but we must go on to create a Welfare Planet.
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 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.
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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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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
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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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Continental people have a sex life the English have hot-water bottles.
George Mikes
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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
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Japan is, you often feel, an improved version of the United States.
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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Tel-Aviv airport is still the only airport in the world where each passenger is met by ten relatives.
George Mikes