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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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George Mikes
Age: 75 †
Born: 1912
Born: February 15
Died: 1987
Died: August 30
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Writer
Siklos
Cannot
Foreigners
Become
Criminal
May
Member
Way
Improve
Always
Criminals
Decent
Members
Society
Foreigner

More quotes by George Mikes

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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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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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Israelis keep teaching you your own business. God knows everything but the Israelis know everything better.
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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.
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Humility is one of the most repulsive virtues, nearly always false.
George Mikes
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Once you start buying first aid kits you start having accidents.
George Mikes
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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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Continental people have a sex life the English have hot-water bottles.
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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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
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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.
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.
George Mikes
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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 Moscow they do not pay much attention to the living but keep their cemeteries in a splendid state.
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
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On the Continent people have good food in England people have good table manners.
George Mikes
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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
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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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Japan is, you often feel, an improved version of the United States.
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