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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
A couple from Sydney or Melbourne might leave on the same day for their holiday: the wife might go sun-bathing at Surfers Paradise, in Queensland, the husband ski-ing in the Snowy Mountains. A lucky country.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
A dog will flatter you but you have to flatter the cat.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
A foreign observer is struck by our gentleness: by the orderly behaviour of the English crowds, the lack of pushing and quarrelling, the willingness to form queues.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
American radio is the reverse of the Shakespearean stage. In Shakespeare's time the world's greatest dramas were acted with the most primitive technical arrangements; on the American air the world's most primitive writing is performed under perfect technical conditions.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Australia objects to the mini-skirt not on moral but on economic grounds. Australians are no prudes and the lovely, healthy, sporty Australian girls have no reason to hide their knees and thighs. However, the mini-skirt is disastrous for the wool-trade.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Bad English was the second language of Israel and bad Hebrew, of course, remained the national language.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Bargaining is a repulsive habit; compromise is one of the highest human virtues - the difference between the two being that the first is practised on the Continent, the latter in Great Britain.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Continental people have a sex life; the English have hot-water bottles.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
English humor resembles the Loch Ness Monster in that both are famous but there is a strong suspicion that neither exists.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Foreigners have souls; the English haven't.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Humility is one of the most repulsive virtues, nearly always false.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
I asked many friends if Australian anti-intellectualism was still a living force and they all told me it was. If you are above average intelligence, hide this embarrassing fact.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
I don't say a Zionist must be insane,' said President Weizmann, 'but it helps if he is.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
If somebody tells you an obviously untrue story, on the Continent you would remark, "You are a liar, Sir, and a rather dirty one at that." In England you just say "Oh, is that so?" Or "That's rather an unusual story, isn't it?
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
In Moscow they do not pay much attention to the living but keep their cemeteries in a splendid state.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
In England it is bad manners to be clever, to assert something confidently. It may be your own personal view that two and two make four, but you must not state it in a self-assured way, because this is a democratic country and others may be of a different opinion.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
In the field of snobbery, Australia is an underdeveloped country; even a few British ex-colonies, regarded as under developed in all other respects, could export a great deal of snobbery to Australia and still have enough to spare for their own, internal needs.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
I said in my earlier book, and find no reason for retracting my statement, that the famous Jewish sense of humour got lost in transit to Israel.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Israel also deprived the world of its chance of shedding tears of genuine sympathy over her destruction. The world resents this; it likes to feel noble and sympathetic.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Israelis keep teaching you your own business. God knows everything but the Israelis know everything better.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Japan is, you often feel, an improved version of the United States.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Japan suffered terribly from the atomic bomb but never adopted a pose of moral superiority, implying: 'We would never have done it!' The Japanese know perfectly well they would have used it had they had it. They accept the idea that war is war; they give no quarter and accept none. Total war, they recognize, knows no Queensberry Rules. If you develop a devastating new weapon during a total war, you use it; you do not put it into the War Museum.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Jokes are better than war. Even the most aggressive jokes are better than the least aggressive wars. Even the longest jokes are better than the shortest wars.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Long before the word Zionism was uttered for the first time, old religious Jews came from all over the world to die in Jerusalem. It is the finest place to die in - it has always been acknowledged. It has a joie de mourir quite its own.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Many Continentals think life is a game; the English think cricket is a game.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Nobody uses his car in New York, because so many people use it that traffic is congested and unbearably slow.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Once you start buying first aid kits you start having accidents.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
On the Continent there is one topic which should be avoided-the weather; in England, if you do not repeat the phrase "Lovely day, isn't it?" at least two hundred times a day, you are considered a bit dull.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
People on the Continent either tell you the truth or lie; in England they hardly ever lie, but they would not dream of telling you the truth.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Prices in Italy are only slightly lower than in France, which means that Italy is a very expensive country for everyone, natives, visitors and tourists.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Rich people (in Australia) have swimming pools in their gardens but, at least, they do swim in them.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
Tel-Aviv airport is still the only airport in the world where each passenger is met by ten relatives.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
The Americans are extremely gadget minded people and American gadgets have a peculiar characteristic: they work.
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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
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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By AnonymGeorge Mikes
THE British are brave people. They can face anything, except reality.
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