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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.

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
Strong
Baseball
Accent
Earth
National
Cricket
America
Americans
Accents
Game
Unlike
Games
Spoken
American
Humorous
Funny
Entirely
Language
Played

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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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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 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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Many Continentals think life is a game the English think cricket is a game.
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Humility is one of the most repulsive virtues, nearly always false.
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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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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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Japan is, you often feel, an improved version of the United States.
George Mikes
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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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The man who is not afraid of danger is not a hero, but a psychopath.
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Once you start buying first aid kits you start having accidents.
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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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Continental people have a sex life the English have hot-water bottles.
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To be extravagant you need money. True. But you do not need your own money.
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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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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THE British are brave people. They can face anything, except reality.
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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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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Was he joking? Was he being sarcastic? Aggressive? Impertinent? Or just courteous? There was no telling from his impassive face. What a country, he thought despairingly. In Russia you always knew. If a man made a stern face he was threatening if he was laughing uproariously, he was joking.
George Mikes