Peter Ustinov Quotes (51 Quotes)


    To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.

    I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool an optimist must know how sad a place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.

    It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon.

    Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.

    In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.


    A diplomat these days in nothing, but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally.

    By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.

    If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.

    Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

    The French and the British are such good enemies that they can't resist being friends.

    It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.

    If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.

    Men think about women. Women think about what men think about them.

    The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.

    Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.

    Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.

    Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares.


    I have four children which is not bad considering I'm not a Catholic.

    Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.

    There is no question but that if Jesus Christ, or a great prophet from another religion, were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners.

    The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.

    Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique.


    People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

    I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.

    Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.

    I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.

    Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much.

    Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.

    At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.

    And here is the lesson I learned in the army. If you want to do a thing badly, you have to work at it as though you want to do it well.

    Acting on television is like being asked by the captain to entertain the passengers while the ship goes down.

    Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.

    Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.

    Sometimes I wish I could just fall in love. Then, at least you know who your opponent is.

    The point of living and of being an optimist is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.

    Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.

    The great thing about History is that it is adaptable.

    Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.

    Monica Seles: I'd hate to be next door to her on her wedding night.

    Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

    The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

    uncontrolled photography is one of the blights of our time.

    Parents are the bones upon which children sharpen their teeth.

    I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.


    The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.

    Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.

    There are no old men any more. Playboy and Penthouse have between them made an ideal of eternal adolescence, sunburnt and saunaed, with the grey dorianed out of it.


    More Peter Ustinov Quotations (Based on Topics)


    World - Friendship - Laughter - People - Love - Mind - Parents - America - Time - Religions & Spirituality - Nature - Truth - Television - Photography - Night - Ambition - Thought & Thinking - Duty - Science - View All Peter Ustinov Quotations

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