Peter Ustinov Quotes

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

It is unfortunate for all that no moral issue has ever been clearer. Any attempt to plea-bargain with outlaws and renegades will only be at the expense of honor, decency and self-respect. The Serbs, are two-dimensional people with a craving for simplicity and an ideology so basic it can be understood without effort. They need enemies, not friends, to focus their two-dimensional ideas. Life for them is a simple tune, never an orchestration, or even a pleasant harmony. Animals make use of their resources with far greater felicity than these retorted creatures, whose subscription to the human race is well in arrears.

I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

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

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

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.

To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness.

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

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

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.

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

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

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

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